David J.
Danto
Business travel
thoughts in my own, personal opinion
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org 
Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD
Warming Up For The Holiday Melt Down
Fasten Your Seatbelts for a bumpy-end to 2021. We are
heading for a holiday season with a perfect storm in airline travel. The airlines are short-staffed (due both to
their furloughing of staff that we taxpayers paid them not to do, and because
there is a small but visible percentage of idiots working for them that refuse
to get vaccinated.) The TSA is short staffed, many of the airports have reduced
services, and there are sadly many more than the usual number of unruly
travelers gumming-up the works. In
addition to all that, the Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year
holidays all happen near the end of the months of November and/or December –
when crews are approaching the limit of their available legal hours. Welcome to the not so amusing amusement ride
at end of 2021.
Additionally, if all of the above
wasn’t bad enough, add to it the fact that there is pent-up travel demand due
to nineteen months of a pandemic which prevented most travel. People miss their families, they miss their
vacations and they miss traveling. And
most of them have been away from it for long enough to have forgotten what a
nightmare it was even before this perfect storm.
It doesn’t take a theme-park expert
to realize that we are on the runaway train ride – the one that is speeding with
no breaks toward the massive drop. If
you do plan to travel in November and December please follow all the
precautions that you hopefully have learned from years of travel experiences. Here are a few reminders:
· Assume no
flight will be on time. If you must
take connecting flights then give yourselves hours of layover time – anything
less than two hours should be assumed to be a connection you probably will
miss. If someone in your traveling party
is bothered by the long layover remind them how much more bothered they’d be by
missing their flights.
· Do not plan
trips that have you arriving on the day of an event. Arrive one or two days early, giving yourself
some pad if you are delayed. And, as I blogged about a few
months ago, forget the same-day business trip anywhere. The airline industry is no longer equipped to
handle those.
· Do advance
research on your available alternatives.
These include alternate flights that may be on other carriers, and
complete alternates to flying (driving or train transportation.) I have experienced (enough times to count) my
airline telling me ‘there are no alternate flights for days’ when they have
cancelled or misconnected me, but then (by myself) finding easily available
flights on them or other carriers. Be
prepared to pay cash for your alternate and then fight with your original
airline or credit-card company after the fact.
· Assume you
will NOT get your checked luggage on time. Carry-on at least a couple of days of clothes
changes, your needed toiletries and of course any medications you need and/or any
irreplaceable items. I can’t tell you
how many times airlines lose your checked bags for days – sometimes getting
them back to you on the last day of your trip, sometimes never getting them
back to you.
Oh, and remember that 1970s / 1980s
advice to fill out the frequent flyer application as long as your already in
the airport? Well, forget that. It’s time to stop playing the airline loyalty
game. It is hard to imagine, but if
there are still readers of my blog and/or JoeSentMe.com who are still striving
for elite status on airlines, please just be smart about it and give up
now. All of the major US airlines have
so watered down their loyalty programs that they are mere hollow shells of the
past. Most recently, American Airlines
has completely abandoned any linkage between loyalty and flying. They and the others have squarely moved into
the camp of ‘loyalty for spending,’
not loyalty for using their services.
And in addition, the benefits for being loyal are a joke. These companies are not loyal to you in
return for your efforts, so as I said it’s long past time to abandon the
schemes. Stop using airline credit cards
– switch to ones that give you other benefits and/or cash back. Stop saving-up (or heaven forbid, actually
purchasing) their false “miles” currency.
The airlines know most people never use these so they keep selling the
fake money with no penalty or downside.
Pay cash for your flights and services.
Get out of the horse race. There
is no successful finish – the theme park ride in this case is really just a
merry-go-round, and not a fun one at that.
You can never get where you want to be by going around in circles.
One final note. Today,
finally, I believe we are at a starting point for the end of the COVID19
Pandemic. We have a vaccine being administered to everyone including kids as young as 5, and, we are about to have an
effective, after-the fact treatment for infections.
Once that treatment (Pfizer's pill Paxlovid)
is approved and widely available we should start to see the real sunset of the
pandemic. That is of course only if we beat the arrival of any new variants.
If you haven't been vaccinated, please do it ASAP. If you
haven't received a booster yet please do that too. And until that pill is
available at your pharmacy please keep wearing masks regardless of any local
laws or lack thereof.
I hope and pray it is finally the beginning of the end.
This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal
opinions.
All image and links provided above as reference under
prevailing fair use statutes.
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As always, feel free to write and comment, question or
disagree. Hearing from the traveling
community is always a highlight for me.
Thanks!