Tips for the Unlucky Holiday Season Traveller
Due to poor travel booking on my part (I optimised on ticket price rather than flight time or schedule robustness), what was scheduled to be a 19 hour journey from London to Kelowna, BC, Canada via Cincinnati and Seattle, if all connections happened as planned, became a 40 hour door-to-door ordeal. Obviously all connections did not happen as planned.

Which sucked.

But I got to Kelowna the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and unlike the poor people I met in Cincinnati I didn't have to spend 36 hours sitting at a gate looking forlornly out the window at a plane that was not boarding, and there were no massive tsunamis killing thousands of people nearby, so it could have sucked much worse. It would also have sucked worse had I not mitigated my booking stupidity with some packing, purchasing, and attitudinal cleverness. My tips:

1. Wear a hat
   Soft hats with brims have many important uses and don't take up much space in your bags. They keep your ears warm in a cute and stylish way. They act as a very thin pillow when you're sleeping against a plane or bus window. They cover up your haven't-showered-in-40-hours hair. Pulled over your face, they not only act as an eyeshade but also conceal that you're sleeping with your mouth open if you are in fact sleeping with your mouth open.
2. Carry it all on
   It's bad enough when you know that you only have 25 minutes from the time your plane has landed until your next plane is due to take off. If you do miss that next plane, though, at least you're not second-guessing whether the time saved not waiting at the baggage carrousel would have made a difference.
3. Sleep better through chemistry
   At Gatwick I did the timezone calculation and discovered my flight from London to Cincinnati was over 9 hours long. Consequently I bought sleeping pills and deep vein thrombosis-preventing flight socks at the airport Boots. I don't know if the sleep socks helped any, but a sleeping pill after the meal had been served made it much easier to sleep through the remainder of that flight, and another before the start of my bus trip from Vancouver to Kelowna made up for my poor-despite-the-hat-eyeshade sleep in the Vancouver airport.
   I don't recommend taking sleeping pills on flights shorter than 6 hours or if you're sleeping in an airport or bus station. Your paranoia may vary.
4. Don't panic
   This helpful advice came from the US Customs official who checked my visa exemption form in Cincinnati, after the other official herding us into queues had announced that no flights had been leaving the airport for the last 2 days due to snow, and when asked what the purpose of my visit to the USA was I'd replied "well, I'm supposed to be flying from Seattle to my parents' city in Canada later today..." Indeed, panicking is much less useful than a hat and sleeping pills.
5. Don't believe the departure screens
   After clearing customs, the screens said my flight to Seattle was still scheduled for a timely take-off. The screens lied.
6. If you can't get on the plane you want, get on one that gets you somewhere closer to it
   This is obvious, but when there are no further flights going where you want to go for the next two days, and it's late in the night of December 23rd and you really want to get home for Christmas, it's worth asking the check-in agent if they can put you on another flight that gets you within a reasonable bus ride of your destination. I am extremely grateful to the Alaska Airlines agent who got me on the flight to Vancouver, and who protected my return flight despite the change of itinerary.
7. To get off the plane quickly, cover your face and fake a nosebleed
   Sadly, by the time my delayed flight to Vancouver had landed, the overnight bus to Kelowna was already en route and I was in no hurry, already mentally braced to sleep in the airport if I couldn't get on a flight with Westjet or Air Canada (I couldn't, as it turns out -- the Westjet agent kindly suggested that it was less dodgy to sleep at the airport than the bus station and that the area between the domestic and international terminals had the most comfortable benches). But another unlucky traveller was trying to get off the plane more quickly because they were holding the airport shuttle to Whistler for her. The guy sitting next to me let her go ahead of him in the aisle, but the people in front of us were unsympathetic, so he suggested the nosebleed tactic: "no one wants to get blood on them. It works every time."

I hope you had a good Christmas, if you celebrate it, and that you're well rested with warm ears.
- posted by Christina @ 2:20 pm