The Christmas Travel Battle : 2010 Edition

Oh, the Christmas Travel Battle! You probably remember that I got to play this game in both 2008 and 2009. Those years, it was my outgoing NYC-DFW travel that had some hiccups. I thought I was in the clear this year when I made it to DFW on December 17th with no hitches whatsoever. But, that all changed the day before I was supposed to return home! Here's the play-by-play of this year's battle:

- Flight home booked for Monday, December 27th at 6:30am on US Airways with layover in Philly.
- On Sunday, begin hearing the news that a storm headed towards both NYC and Philly is going to be a doozy. Around lunch-time, I get online to check my flight. Both legs have already been cancelled!
- I immediately call US Air and pretty easily re-book for Tuesday morning around 10:30, with the layover switched to Charlotte. Cross my fingers that the office is closed on Monday so I don't have to take an extra vacation day for this little change of plans.
- Scream to the family - I get to stay for 24 more hours! I explain to Ryder what happened and he starts yelling "SuSu gets to stay more! SuSu gets to stay more!" Dance party ensues.
- Call office as soon as I wake on Monday morning - it's officially closed! Yes! The vacation day I'd planned to use for Monday can now be used Tuesday instead...no extra days to take!
- Feel a little disappointed to be missing the biggest blizzard to hit NYC since my move there. Quickly get over it - I'm happy to be where I am!

Since Monday in Dallas was completely unplanned, it was the most relaxing day ever (well, until Tuesday). Mom and I saw not one, but two movies that day, hit up Target (something that I didn't find time to cross off my list of to-do's the previous week), and Brian cooked us an awesome chili dinner made with venison he hunted himself.

- Monday night, I got online to check on Tuesday morning flights and they are both good to go.
- Tuesday morning is stressful as I realize I have way too much stuff to lug home and it will. not. fit. With both parents looking on and with the help of their handy suitcase weigher, I finally end up with a small box for mom to ship, a suitcase to check that weighs just over 50lbs, and a very heavy carry-on that I'm not excited about having to carry all day.
- Dad and I load up and head for the airport. As he drops me off (nearly in tears...sweet dad still occasionally chokes-up at good-byes), he tells me he has his cell turned on should anything happen. I feel extremely honored as I have never known him to leave his cell on for anyone! (He turns it on to make out-going calls and keeps it off the rest of the time. Yes, it's odd but we're used to it.)
- I get into the airport, check my suitcase, and get through security pretty quickly. I sit in the waiting area for only a few minutes when they are ready to start boarding the plane. Things are moving along and I am certain that I am headed home.
- They start to board the special needs people then Zone 1 and 2. I'm Zone 3...they'll call my group any minute. My cell phone rings and it's a 1-800 number. I knew immediately who it would be when I answered.
- A recorded voice tells me that my flight from Charlotte to NYC has been cancelled and gives me a number that I need to call to reschedule. I quickly hang-up and dial the number I was given. As I'm doing so, I look around and watch the same pattern happen across the room - I wasn't the only person headed towards Charlotte who was getting this phone call!
Can we take a minute to wipe the sweat off our brows and let out a big phewwwww! Do you realize that I was mere minutes from getting on a plane to Charlotte that would have left me stranded there for four days?? Including New Year's Eve? Thank goodness US Air called just in the nick of time.
- I figured that I would be on hold forever, but was actually connected to someone within a minute - nice! She was a very sweet, patient, older sounding woman who started to look for flights back to NYC. As she's looking, I can tell that she's concentrating on flights to Newark with layovers in Charlotte. I explain that I can fly to any of the 3 NYC airports and that I don't care where I layover. She says that may help. Then slowly she says...
"Well, there's nothing left for today." Then,
"No, nothing for tomorrow."

- I ask if there's a way that she can get me on another airline. She says they're all going through the same thing, so no. She continues to look..."Nothing for Thursday. Let me check Friday - I think there will be availability there." I tell her not to even bother looking at Friday. If I wasn't going to make it back for work all week, I preferred to stay in Dallas as long as I could. I knew my New Year's Eve plans in NYC were in limbo as one of the people I had planned to celebrate with was stuck in Houston through Saturday and the other was still in limbo, also in Houston.
- She gets to Saturday and there is all kinds of availability. I'm booked on the first flight out (6:30AM!), with the layover moved back to Philly. She asks if I'm going to be celebrating the night before and I realize that yes, most likely I will be and yes, 6:30am after New Year's Eve is going to hurt. But I have to be back for something Saturday night, so I'll have to manage with little sleep.
I will fully admit that I could have pushed harder. I'm pretty good about getting what I want when it comes to flying....asking the right questions and refusing to take no for an answer. I believe that I could have gotten on a flight some time during the day on Wednesday, at least. I could have taken an attitude and required her to check the other airlines. But, I knew that at most I would probably only get back for 1 workday (Thursday...Friday was a Holiday) and it just didn't seem worth it for that. I was looking forward to the unexpected bonus time in Dallas!
- At this point the lady on the phone asks, "Did you check any bags." Oh. my. gosh. It is at this point I realize that I'm going to be stuck for 5 days without my suitcase! One day I could have managed, but 5?! I look up at this point and realize that there is a MOB of people at the desk...I should be in that mob!! I get up and into the mob and the lady on the phone finishes booking me and says maybe I'll be able to get my suitcase back. I was worried because I have never, ever known an airline to send suitcases back up from a plane and by this point the plane is basically boarded and close to being ready for take-off.
- Thankfully, I overhear one of the airline employees on a walkie-talking saying "HOLD ALL BAGS TO NEWARK! HOLD ALL BAGS TO NEWARK!"
Can we take another minute to wipe the sweat off our brows and let out a big phewwwww! They were separating my bag.
- At this point, I call my dad "Dad, I need you to come back. I'm stuck here until Saturday!" I figured he was still on his way home, but found out later that much more time had passed than I realized. He'd already made it home and had been working in his office for a while. Luckily, he didn't mind getting back in the car and coming back to fetch me.
- Eventually I made it through the mob of people and to the counter where I was able to give the airline employees my baggage tags so that they could make sure mine got sent up. It actually didn't take too long for my bag to show up on the carousel at baggage claim.

The awesome thing about all of this is that I was forced into a week that was totally unplanned which meant that there was a lot more quiet and relaxation than I'm used to. I had specifically prayed before I left for Dallas (and had a few friends praying this for me) that I would find time to be quiet during my break. That I would intentionally leave some time that wasn't planned where I could relax and just be. Well, my first 9-days in Dallas ended up being pretty planned out and although there were some quiet afternoons, it was mostly very busy full of family, friends, parties, the boyz, shopping, etc.... It seems like God decided to rearrange my plans to come back to NYC and bestow upon me the quiet time I had prayed for. The Tuesday that my flight didn't go out, my mom and I spent all day just at her house. Worked on finishing a puzzle we had started, read, napped and finally left the house after 6pm just to go see a movie. It was so nice.
It was also kind of awesome that this gave me the opportunity to return 4 very huge/awkward/heavy-to-carry frames my sister had given me for Christmas. Thus making my packing much easier the 2nd time around. I'll repurchase the frames in NYC!
The downside was that I had to take 2 vacation days I was not planning to take. I'm going to spend some time in the hole this summer (after a trip to Spain -woohoo!), which I don't like to do, but I've already spoken to HR about it and we're a-ok.
I realize this has gotten very, very long. But for future trips, I want to document some lessons I've learned in the game of the Christmas Travel Battle this year. Feel free to take any of these into consideration for your own travels!

1) When traveling for Christmas (when the weather has the potential to be bad), don't schedule flights that will include layovers. I think it just complicates things and makes the rescheduling more difficult. Also, who wants to get stuck in some random city for the Holidays because your 2nd leg got cancelled. Of course, this year flight prices were INSANE and I could not justify paying for any other flight...this one was expensive enough!
2) If you have to have a layover, it should always be in Philly. Atlanta works, too. Chick-fil-a for lunch or dinner makes flying so much better.
3) When you hear that a bad storm is headed towards any city you are flying to, from, or thru, immediately start checking the status of your flights. I found out my Monday flight was cancelled before I received any sort of notification because I was pro-active and went online and checked very early. That allowed me to book a seat for Tuesday (which never would have been available if I had waited much longer).
4) When a flight is cancelled due to a major storm, any other kind of serious weather conditions or a disaster of some other sort, don't reschedule your flight for the very next day after the storm or disaster occurs. I am convinced that when my Monday flight was cancelled on Sunday I should have skipped trying to get out on Tuesday and just gone for Wednesday. A lot of Tuesday flights were cancelled, but things were much better by Wednesday. If on Sunday I had secured a seat on a Wednesday flight, I would have made it home that day. But, by the time my Tuesday morning flight was cancelled, all the Wednesday seats were taken by all the other people who also had their flights cancelled on Monday. Aw, well, that would have only gotten me back for 1 work day. Not sure it was worth that.
5) Consider flying to another city. I assumed that all the East coast cities were blasted by this storm. Amazingly, DC was skipped over. It doesn't make much sense since the blizzard hit the entire eastern corridor (from South Carolina to New England). Somehow, DC only got maybe an inch of snow and flights were still going in/out of their airports without delay. I didn't know this until well after the fact, but if I had been as smart as another girl I know, I could have flown to DC on Monday and taken a train or bus the rest of the way into NYC. Still not sure it would have been worth the hassle, but definitely something to remember for future.

I like to say that I won the Christmas Travel battle of 2008 and 2009, but this year I waved the white flag and surrendered. I think it was worth it!