One Man’s Opinion
Should I ever be offered a seat on Santa’s trans-continental sleigh, upfront or in the jump seat ... I’m in!However, as I still have to work at staying off the naughty liston occasion, I am more likely to be stuckinComfort Plus, Business Class, or Coach during holiday travel.
This year, my youngest daughter and I are heading to the Big Apple for an “Elf”-style Christmas in the city that never sleeps.
We’ll be staying at a family-favorite hotel in Midtown, with the same name as my firstborn child, The Barclay.Planning several New York tourist jaunts to see the massive Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, thenthenearby Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular withtheRockettes and Santa Claus.With tickets for the latter exceeding the price of our airlineflights, that kick line better be good.
Though I expect to encounter only a few masks this year, we are both well-vaccinated and accustomed to travel.
And holiday-period travel most of all reminds me that experience is far from universal.
Triple-A is projecting 119 million Americans will be hitting the road or flying the not-so-friendly skies between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.The world’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, isexpecting nearly four million passengers going through its seven concourses and several hundred gates during thatsame period.That equals roughly half the populationof metro New York City through one airport in just over a 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, except for the lightcrowds during theCOVID-19 years,I’ve not seen aholiday travel season without witnessing one or more passenger meltdowns.Most of theseoccurredin the terminal,aimed at gate agents, but a few came 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 on answers for adjusted times of departure and landing ... or break out in profanity and swear off an air carrier, typically while cursing the agent or flight attendant NOT in charge of the proceedings at hand. So, if traveling alongside me, PLEASEpack your patience and understanding. When an airline or airport is operating at capacity and gets impacted by foul weather or even a mechanical breakdown,your foul moodwill not change the weather forecast, nor expedite an answer on when your flight will make the air.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, making the jetseemingly enter a dramatic drop.Remember, hot air lifts and rises; cold air, not so much.
If you think about the sheer number of passengers, packages, and luggage moving from points A to B to C insuchcompressed time frames, it really is a marvel of logistics.
That is, until you or your flightbecomesthe cog jamming a sometimes- overwrought system.
My three-part treatment plan to reduce your agita and better prepare you for your destination?
First, consider train travel where Amtrakdoes 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 theBlue 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 traveler with their first choice of restaurant selection when you reach your holiday destination. At some point, you likely will be dining out anyway.
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, and possibly not even a warm home to sit in, alone.You and yours are amply blessed, so try and turn that frown upside down, sit back, and enjoy the ride.Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and safe holiday travels to all.
