What the winter travelling is all about - Do not connect where there is risk for whiteout

Dear blog reader,

My most recent trip was a rough one. An 06.40am start. 2 hours delay at the first transit point. Lost connection at the 2nd, which forced a 3rd connection point and arrival at destination at midnight. Just to arrive when the local team, that had won the national football cup, is coming home and tons of people are welcoming them at the airport. This resulted in a 3h taxi queue for the rest of us, that were somewhat less fanatic about the team and their achievements.

The good news were in the mail the day after. Air France sending an apologize for not meeting their own quality standards, and providing a few extra miles as a nice gesture. Appreciated, especially as they stand out for still serving decent food on their planes, and have a clear competitive edge in that area.

With some time to think and reflect I have almost forgot about the basic rules for travelling in North America at winter time

• Avoid connecting at the North Eastern airports in the US in general
• Avoid connecting at ORD in particular
• Avoid at connecting between two competing alliances
• Avoid checking luggage

There are a lot of news with regards to the Alliance landscape that affect North American travel. This becomae very clear to me as I started on a SkyTeam carrier, landed with a OneWorld carrier, and got my delayed bags shipped with a Star Alliance carrier. Little hope for that such a combination to result in any speedy bag delivery. The following is worth considering

• Continental have left SkyTeam, which make ATL the only decent SkyTeam HUB in the US for the time being
• Continental has joined Star Alliance making IAH and EWR new attractive Star Alliance Hubs in addition to ORD.
• Mexicana have joined OneWorld, and is starting to play a larger role in the routes from DFW and south, at the same time as they maintain their conncetions to ORD and a few other US locations.

The waiting time for my bag reminded me about some of the old rules of how to secure that you get your checked bag back and experience less hazzle from loosing it temporarily:

• Have a prewritten information sheet with all your local contact details, bagtype etc. that you can hand over to the desk dealing with lost luggage. And request both phone and Internet contact details. If it is one department that have few staff for phone calls these days it is the department for lost luggage.
• Always put a Letter/A4 paper on top in your checked bag with all flights informations and contact details, in case some bagtag or nametag falls off. Preferably naming all high value items in order to prevent anyone making your bag a bit lighter en route.
• Travel with a copy of your travel insurance details wrt how/when the different threshold levels for emergency shopping kicks-in. They are normally picky on the time and date stamps for the receipts when making the claims.

Looking at the most recent weather reports I am happy that my connections going home will be southbound on the first leg, with plenty of connection time on the first stop. There might be a chance that I will get home in time for Christmas even though the schedule is tight at the end.

Happy Holidays !!!