Rules to learn when your trip meets unexpected hurdles
I may not always be the smartest or the most gifted person in a room, but I do have the good fortune of being born a middle child.
According to psychologists, birth order plays an important role in our development. Luckily, I was never burdened with the high hopes and perfection expectations of my older sister nor was I ever as over-indulged or spoiled as my baby sister. These position factors are said to affect a child's personality.
Whereas, I never felt overlooked, inadequate, or unloved as the middle child, but I do believe my birth order did provide me with an inordinate dose of patience and perseverance. By always being dragged along to watch and experience all the exciting "firsts" of my older sister, which, to be honest, were probably not such a big deal to my parents the second time around, I learned patience, how to wait for turn for my time in the spotlight. Then, because I was constantly reminded to "share nicely" to placate my baby sister, I was able to refine my perseverance skills.
Some might suggest I developed a stubborn streak, but my dad gave it another name. He called my determination to never give up or give in, to always get up and take one step forward no matter how many times I got knocked down as "grit." And, folks, after a family vacation to Maine, I am here to tell you a pretty healthy dose of "grit" may be just what you need to manage travel in today's post-Covid world.
As much as we want it to be, nothing is quite normal yet. Sometimes, Murphy's law --you know, the one about if anything can go wrong, it will--prevails. You need to be ready, because, for the first time ever, it happened to us!
Two weeks ago on a beautiful Saturday morning, Rob and I, along with my baby sister who lives in Shreveport, headed to Green Bay, Wisconsin. The idea was for us to enjoy a long overdue family reunion with my older sister and all her kids before she returned home to Shreveport and we continued on for a couple weeks in Maine where a vacation with our kids and grandkids had been planned. The logistics, from prepaid hotels to car rentals, certainly looked good on paper, but, then, Mother Nature intervened.
A sudden storm in Atlanta shut the airport down; our flight from Monroe was re-routed to Birmingham where ground time resulted in a missed connection. Everything went south from there as the world's busiest airport was very quickly overwhelmed with flight delays and people. I had never seen anything like it. Forget websites, service lines, texting apps, or getting re-routed by a real person on an airline reservation desk.
I have been a travel agent at Monroe Travel Service for over 40 years; I know the game well and here is the naked truth: there is no magic bullet anymore. If you cannot do it online, you are on your own. Even when I got to the front of one service desk agent, he referred me to the multitude of phones in his area. Thus, until the midnight hour, we traversed the Atlanta Airport only to find standby lists closed, no flight crews available, or, on the one flight we were finally able to reserve, the pilots were timed out.
Totally exhausted, we grabbed a hotel room, and, after a 3 hour hold time with Delta, I gave up and decided to start the fight for a flight the next day. At this point, let me interject a quick travel hint: weather delays are not the airline's problem. You get no compensation for hotels, meals, and incidentals, which is a good reason to always allow for such added expenses as well as pack extra time into your itinerary for unexpected emergencies. Atlanta Airport hotels were jammed with other inconvenienced travelers; our room at the Embassy Suite was $270 for the night, so between meals and other out-of-pocket expenses, things add up quickly.
In addition to these extra expenses, we were charged--and, no matter how hard I persevered-- no-show penalties at our missed destination. That was another $500 added to our total--and we had gotten nowhere!
I hustled over to the airport really early the next morning to hit a service desk, but, once again, they were slammed. Since all flights into our original destination were sold out, I was hoping the airlines would authorize the sister-city rule, but this is a change that can only be completed by a real person, not online. (FYI: the sister-city rule allows airlines to re-route passengers--at no additional cost to the traveler-- to or from another destination as long as it is within a 100 miles of their original ticketed city.)
Once again, over three hours of standing in a "service" line where I simultaneously listened to Delta Airline's phone message repeatedly saying how important my call was to them, I arrived in front of an experienced agent who not only knew about the "sister city" rule but got us seats into Appleton, Wisconsin, on a 10 pm flight. I tipped her $50 for the service; she deserved it. She had saved our vacation.
Unfortunately, and this is not intended as an inference to birth order, my baby sister, who had become so exhausted and dismayed by the flight cancellations and interruptions and feared facing the same problems on her return trip, chose to give up on the entire trip; she returned to Monroe. I did not blame her and completely understood.
Travel can be frustrating today. Shortages and staffing problems do exist. Things are still not normal. Yet, in spite of all of the delays, hours wasted in hold time, luggage lost for 3 days, and the extra money spent for an overnight plus a day rate at the hotel , we trudged on and finally arrived in Green Bay at 2am on Monday.
Our vacation had finally begun. The wise words of the cute Jamaican shuttle driver at the Embassy Suite who carried us to the airport for the final time actually rang true when he reminded us, "No worries, Mon. When you get finally where you are going, the mind will settle in a minute."
He was right. All the problems, inconveniences, money, energy, and time wasted did "settle in a minute" as our time with the family in Wisconsin and the wonderful luxury of a vacation in Maine exceeded our expectations . In all of our travels, this tale of woe was really our very first bad experience, and I share it only because I want you to remember:
Plan for problems. Dress comfortably. Carry-on in your bag or back pack all medicines, change of clothes, glasses, and any hard-to-find personal items that cannot easily be purchased in an airport or hotel shop.
Purchase travel insurance. Out-of-pocket expenses add up quickly. We incurred over $750 in hotel expenses through no fault of our own. Trip interruption insurance would have reimbursed us for these unexpected expenses.
Don't forget about the sister-city rule. You need to know the possibilities, because, sometimes, agent Joe in India might be geographically challenged and not offer such alternatives to help you out when things go wrong.
Travel is back and, as a travel agent, I am thrilled to see the skies busy again. Every flight we were on was filled to capacity. Airports and airlines--from baggage handlers to pilots--seem to be struggling to get back to normal. Until that happens, I suggest you either let a middle child fight your fights or show alot of "grit," because, when all is said and done, a vacation is still so very worth it!
Dianne Newcomer is a travel agent at Monroe Travel Service. For your next vacation, please call Page, Linda, Rob or Dianne at 318 323 3465 or email us at INFO@MONROETRAVEL.com. We are ready to send you away!
This article originally appeared on Monroe News-Star: Rules to learn when your trip meets unexpected hurdles
