Should I ever be offered a seat on Santa’s trans-continental sleigh, up front or in the jump seat...I’m in. However, as I still have to work at staying off the Naughty list on occasion, I am more likely to be stuck in Comfort Plus, Business Class or Coach during holiday travel. My youngest daughter and I are heading to the Big Apple, for an “Elf” style Christmas in the city that never sleeps.
Staying at a business and family favorite hotel in Midtown, with the same name as my first born child...The Barclay. Planning several New York tourist jaunts to see the massive Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, then the nearby Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes and Santa Claus. With tickets for the latter exceeding the price of our airline flights, that kick line better be good.
Though I expect to only encounter a few masks this year, we are both well vaccinated and accustomed to travel. And holiday period travel reminds me most of all that experience is far from universal.
AAA is projecting 119-million Americans will be hitting the road or flying the not-so-friendly skies between Christmas Eve eve and New Year’s Day. The worlds’ busiest airport, Hartsfield Atlanta Jackson International is expecting nearly 4-million passengers through its seven concourses and few hundred gates during that same period. That is roughly half the population of metro New York City through one airport is just over one week.
Weather and flight delays during these jammed flight weeks are more customary than not. Tight flight connections can add another layer of anxiety. However, with the exception of the light crowds during the Covid years, I’ve not seen a holiday travel season without witnessing one or a handful of passenger meltdowns. Most of these occur in the terminal, aimed at Gate Agents, but more than a few in the air as well.
Travel delays cascade, and foul weather at one major airport or hub on the east coast can impact the entire system. Passengers grow sullen and increasingly insistent for answers on the adjusted time of departure and landing...or break out profanity and swear off an air carrier, while swearing at the agent or flight attendant NOT in charge of the proceedings at hand.
PLEASE pack your patience and understanding. When an airline or airport is operating at capacity, impacted by foul weather or even mechanical breakdown, your foul mood will not change the weather forecast, nor expedite an answer on when your flight will make the air. And similarly, on the flight, cold air from Canada and points north can mix with warmer tropic air and hot pockets...causing turbulence or even times when the hot air moves above the cold, that the jet can make a seemingly dramatic drop. Hot air lifts and rises...cold air, not so much.
If you think about the sheer number of passengers, packages and luggage moved from points A to B to C in such compressed time frames, it really is a marvel of logistics, until you or your flight become the cog jamming or getting caught in a sometimes overwrought system.
My three part treatment plan to reduce your agita and better prepare you for your destination... Consider train travel where Amtrak does go. Rail travel has its own logistical challenges, primarily caused by freight traffic, but I vastly prefer the slower pace, time to rest, write or converse with other passengers and see the country in a way that few now do. Olivia, like me, loves trains, so we will be returning from NYC on the Crescent, sort of the Polar Express in reverse. From the great white north, heading south into the hopefully snow-covered Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, then the Blue Ridge Mountains thereafter, later Charlotte and eventually, mid-Christmas morning, back home in Atlanta.
When traveling with children, turn the various traumas of travel into a game or competition, keep loose score and award the BEST traveller with their first choice of restaurant selection when you reach your holiday destination. You will likely be dining out anyway at some point.
And try to remember, even IF the airport or weather in transit is hellish,...there are plenty of people out and about with nowhere to go, no one to see, possibly with not even a home to sit in warmly but alone. You and yours are amply blessed, try and turn that frown upside down, sit back and enjoy the ride. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and safe holiday travels.