Colonie
With planes more crowded than ever this summer, a missed connection or canceled flight can leave you stranded a day or more as you wait for empty seats to open up. Checking the status of your flight and acting quickly when delays pop up can minimize disruptions. After all, no one wants to waste valuable vacation days and hotel reservations stuck at the airport.
Flying out of Albany can have some advantages. Because airlines here typically fly to more than one hub, you have the flexibility to reroute around a problem area.
Jean Gagnon, office manager at Plaza Travel in Latham, suggests you sign up with your airline to receive flight updates. Gagnon recommends a mobile application, TripCase, that provides updates.
Each carrier also has a mobile app that will keep you posted and can be downloaded to your smartphone.
US Airways’ mobile app, for example, has a “BeNotified” feature that will give you the up-to-the-minute status of your flight.
If it appears you’ll miss a connecting flight, contact your airline or travel agent. While airline computer systems may automatically rebook you when your original flight is canceled, you can also explore alternate routings yourself, which is what we did last summer.
Our trip to Singapore almost was disrupted by a thunderstorm the night before our departure in Chicago. It delayed the inbound flight, whose crew would overnight in Albany and was required to get a full night’s sleep, pushing back the next morning’s departure for Chicago by four hours.
That would cause us to miss our connection to Hong Kong, where we were to catch the final leg to Singapore.
Our first alert came from the service United offers members of its frequent flier program to keep them informed of any delays.
I went to United’s website and explored new itineraries to see what was available.
I found space on a flight to Newark and seats on the connecting flight to Hong Kong, which would arrive in time to put us on our original flight from there to Singapore.
I then called the airline, which changed my booking. Because time was short, we headed directly to the airport where we picked up our new boarding passes.
It helped that we already had a new itinerary identified that the reservations staff could book, saving them the trouble of exploring alternate routings for us.
Sometimes, delays hit when you least expect them.
We were about to board a flight from San Francisco to Chicago last summer when the gate attendant announced it was canceled because of a hydraulic problem with the aircraft, a Boeing 757.
Because it was a mechanical, not weather, issue that caused the cancellation, the airline was obligated to pick up our hotel and meal tab if it couldn’t get us rebooked quickly.
As it turned out, my wife and I didn’t fly out until the next day, and then on two different airplanes, reuniting at Washington Dulles to fly the final leg home to Albany.
Gagnon suggests calling the airline’s reservation line to rebook, even as you wait in line at the customer service counter.
Frequent travelers who are members of the airline club, which has its own reservations desk, may find the line there shorter.
Hotels can pose another problem with delayed or canceled flights. It’s wise to check out cancellation policies when booking; booking through a hotel’s website may give you more flexibility on changes than using a third-party travel site.
We learned that lesson when high winds forced us to delay by a day a trip to Paris. Unfortunately, the delay didn’t come early enough to give us time to make new arrangements that day, and we ended up not leaving Albany until the next evening, where we made our connection at Newark to our Paris flight.
Alas, we lost one night’s stay in Paris, paying for a room that we didn’t occupy.
A similar experience a year earlier ended better, when we were able to alter our reservation on a trip to Seattle, changing it to one night from two, with no penalty. That booking had been made directly with the hotel chain.
Also, check with your credit card company. Some offer travel insurance as a benefit that may reimburse you for unintended costs when trips are delayed.
In order to take control of your trips when your itinerary is upended, you’ll need the right tools. While we prefer to pack light and travel only with carry-ons, we do always take a laptop, in our case, a MacBook Air.
When a snowstorm at Newark delayed our last flight home by 14 hours, out came the computer, where we made reservations on Amtrak, then headed over to the rail station at the airport.
Four hours later, we were home.
eanderson@timesunion.com • 518-454-5323
Technology travel
Here are some helpful websites that can make your trips a lot smoother (and cheaper):
http://discounts.aarp.org/planyourtrip
Lowdown: Travel deals, discounts, trip planning, mileage and fuel-cost calculators all in one location with this new planning tool. It’s a clean, clear site, welcome for boomers wearing reading glasses. The catch — you must be a member of AARP to get the discounts.
Lowdown: This site helps a traveler identify the anonymous Priceline and Hotwire hotels on which they’re bidding. You can compare amenities of hotels you are considering with hotel identifier amenity information readers have posted on the Betterbidding site.
Lowdown: Available online; also mobile apps for iPhone and iPad. For the littlest travelers and their parents on the road. For $4.99 a month you get a series of fun activities for children like Tap and Sing, which teaches notes, chords and melodies, plus activity sheets, ABCs and books that star the child. For parents, a great app called Coin Flip settles lots of arguments in the wiggly back seat.
Lowdown: Print out last-minute, same-day ultra discounts for many mid-level and budget hotels. Remember that these rates are based on hotel occupancy, so if the hotel is full that night, the hotel doesn’t have to accept the coupon. But on slow weeknights or low seasons, you can save. The day you want to check in, call the hotel and ask if their special coupon rate is good that day. Or just show up and hope for the best.
— Detroit Free Press
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