Tag: air travel

Categories
Tips

2 must-have items for air travel

Whenever I get on a plane lately, the experience provides perfect material for a blog post.

Here is the latest lesson….two items I could not have done without on today’s journey from Austin to Kansas City for the Travel Media Showcase conference.

1.   The 800 telephone number to directly contact the airline. Have it written down AND pre-programmed into your cell phone. Here is why:

  • My original morning flight on Northwest Airlines was already flashing “Delayed” when I arrived at the airport a little after 6 am. Not a good sign, especially since I had a tight plane change/turnaround in Minneapolis (yes, don’t get me started on the absurdity of flying to Minneapolis from Austin in order to get to Kansas City – die, airline hub & spoke!)
  • I went to the gate area to see what was up. No desk attendant from Northwest, no notice on the electronic board indicating a revised departure time.
  • I sat there like a sheep along with everyone else till the scheduled departure time came and went, with NOTHING heard from the airline.  I then whipped out my cell phone, called Northwest’s 800 number and was promptly and politely rebooked onto a Continental Airlines flight leaving just 30 minutes later (and getting me to KC 40 minutes earlier than the original arrival time.)
  • I did a happy dance, grabbed my trusty rolling carryon suitcase — here’s another example of why you should never check luggage these days if you can help it — and I scampered to my new gate.
  • Don’t be a sheep! I learned from calling the 800 number that the plane had a mechanically-related delay of 6 hours; who knows when someone would have come around to tell us that.

2.  Carry a small portable digital music player. Here’s why:

  • Your sanity.  My iPod blocked out having to listen to a yammering TV show at the gate while I waited for Northwest to ignore me (see above.)
  • Your sanity.  My iPod blocked out the screaming child who was running madly around in the Kansas City airport, ignoring his mother and jumping on the luggage carousel. Not my child, and he couldn’t set my teeth on edge, either.
  • Your sanity.  My iPod blocked out the women who blabbed on her cell phone for nearly 40 minutes as I awaited ground transport in KC.
  • Did I say, “your sanity?”  Air travel is crummy enough these days; having pleasant sounds of your own choosing makes life quite tolerable.
Categories
Asia

Oh China, Part One

We discovered that the airplane is its own amusement for a lot of the trip (courtesy Laura Bond Williams)(This is a guest post by Austin-based writer and editor Laura Bond Williams; it’s Part One of a series about taking her two children to China, with tips for long-haul travel with young kids and impressions from her time in the country. Thanks for sharing, Laura!)

“Are you going to take the kids?”

That was the most popular question I got when I told friends and colleagues that our family was going to Beijing, China, for most of April.

(The next question was “Why China?” I’ll get to that another time.)

But the answer to the first was simple: “Yes, we’re taking them.”

Our daughters are 3- and 5-years-old. I was a little surprised that the prospect of a long haul flight (~14 hours) to a non-English speaking country with 2 small children was clearly beyond the comfort zone for many people.

I am here today to say “Fear NOT,” dear travelers. You TOO can make a 14 hour flight with a 3 hour connection, nearly 22 hours of door-to-door travel, with your kids. Just follow these 5 easy steps, and you too could be sitting pretty in a Shunyi Starbucks, observing the glistening haze of pollution overhead and watching cottonwood puffs swirl around you like a crazy springtime snow.

Of course, getting there is only a fraction of the vacation. The real work to prepare kids for the flight and the experience starts weeks in advance. So here are my five easy steps to embarking on a successful long-haul trip with little kids. Some are strategic, and some are practical. Mix and match them to make the perfect trip for you!

A little bit of familiarity can be a good thing for kids in a foreign country (courtesy Laura Bond Williams.)

1) Build curiosity. From the moment we bought our airplane tickets, my husband and I talked about China with our kids. Everywhere we went, we’d say “What do you think the park is like in China?” or “the grocery store?” or “the mall?” “Do you think they have Starbucks? Chick-Fil-A? Target?” “Do they have Chinese restaurants in China, or is it just food?” You get the idea. Build curiosity (including your own) with constant questions.

2) Tell everyone. We told EVERYONE that the girls were going to China. I mean everyone – including the woman at Costco who took their passport photos. Questions from friends, neighbors, classmates and even strangers helped us build our kids’ enthusiasm for the trip. My daughter’s teacher involved her preschool class, and they made a book of questions for her to investigate while in China.

3) Set expectations for the time change. Even though our kids are too young to understand time zones and the concept of the International Date Line, we began talking about the time in China. While our daughters were eating breakfast, we’d talk about our friends eating dinner in China. About a week before we left for Beijing, I started talking about the long flight. I explained we would eat dinner, then a snack, and then breakfast on the plane. And wouldn’t that be FUN?

4) Don’t underestimate their ability to understand. Maps and globes are a must when talking about travel. We also got a great book from our local library, “Me on the Map.” It shows a child in her room, and the room in the house, and the house on the street, street in the city, city in the state, state in the country, country in the world. It helped them understand the radical change of place they were about to experience.

5) Overpack for the flight. I seriously overpacked amusements for the flight. I had sticker books, coloring books, dominoes, card games, pipe cleaners and beads, story books, an iPod with my kids’ favorite songs on a playlist, a small finger puppet theatre…and more. Truthfully, they didn’t need all of that. My 5-year-old watched “Kangaroo Jack” 4 times and was happy as a clam. But it made ME feel prepared for anything.

But what about the flight, you may say. The actual sitting-on-the-plane part? What did I do about that? Well, I really believe that building enthusiasm and anticipation helped make the flight bearable.

Watching your 3-year-old climb the Great Wall is an incredible reward for a mere 14-hour flight (courtesy Laura Bond Williams.)

Okay, so here’s some practical advice, too. My quick list:

  • Order kid’s meals from the airline in advance.
  • Drink lots of water. No juice; it doesn’t rehydrate you well.
  • Take walks around the plane every 2 hours at a minimum.
  • Ask your doctor about over-the-counter medication that can be used as sleep aids, (and yes, I did use those, too). Children do need their sleep, if it’s only a fitful 6 hours.

At the end of the flight, I watched our daughters’ shining, excited faces as we landed in Beijing. They beamed – and I knew they were happy to be there. They were eager to see China.

If they had to sit on a plane for a day to do it, that was okay with them. And it was okay with me, too.

© 2008 Laura Bond Williams

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Categories
Philosophy USA

If you have nothing good to say about U.S. travel, come sit by me

In transit at the dreaded airport (courtesy sheilaz413 at flickr CC)

I am disgusted.

I am a U.S. traveler with multiple transportation options, and most of them are awful.

After a week spent flying from Texas to Virginia to Chicago back to Texas, my verdict is official – air travel is simply wretched. Unless you have the money to decamp to first class, which I do not, it is a soul-sucking, annoying, tiring disaster (and I was traveling alone, without having to worry about wrangling young children.)

I am not clueless about the current high price of fuel, so I understand why the airlines (except for Southwest, which actually planned for a fuel price increase) think they must nickel and dime passengers for every mangy pillow, blanket, sandwich, suitcase and inch of legroom, but I’d rather just pay for a somewhat higher-priced ticket and not be treated like a fee-ridden pest in coach.

I’m your customer, Mr. Airline.

I’m dealing with your dinky seats — I’m not obese nor am I tall, so I can handle crummy seat pitch although if you squeeze it much more, I won’t be able to fit.

I’m dealing with no food — I buy my own sandwich from some random nasty, unimaginative, overpriced food joint in your rat-filled airports.

I check in online, print my own boarding pass and try to arrive early, so you airline jerks can’t involuntarily bump me because you overbooked flights that you knew would be full.

I’m dealing with your rules about checked luggage and I refuse to let you lose my suitcase and have it end up in your Alabama warehouse — I traveled for a week with everything in my wheelie Travelpro carry-on.

I am not clueless about terrorism (co-Honor Graduate of my US Naval War College class should count for something) but I fail to understand uneven enforcement of various draconian TSA security rules that have dubious anti-terrorism benefit.

Example: the great 3 oz liquid flail, wherein my little baggie of appropriately-sized liquid toiletries sailed through checkpoints at Austin and Washington Dulles but TSA suddenly decides at Chicago O’Hare that the bag’s too big….except it was a quart-sized zip-top bag that I picked up from TSA last October when they were handing them out at the Albuquerque airport.

FAIL.

Give me a break.

Let’s not even get into how unwelcome visitors to the U.S. feel, thanks to our screening procedures.

Here’s my beef: we don’t have any other significantly better travel options in the U.S.

  • Unlike Europe and many other continents, we don’t really have a viable passenger rail system in the U.S. that can provide an efficient, well-priced alternative that runs on time, other than a somewhat functional Amtrak grid in the Northeast. I did find a family who rode the rails roundtrip Tucson-Chicago, but don’t expect to adhere to any schedule. Hope springs eternal, since May 10 is National Train Day, for what that’s worth (and I’m the granddaughter of a railroad engineer, so the demise of U.S. rail is painful.)
  • Would you take your kids and “go Greyhound?” Bus systems are starting to respond better to the needs of budget travelers (check out Megabus and BoltBus) but how well do those funky downtown bus stations work with children in tow?
  • Gas is pushing $4/gallon, and it seems wasteful for individuals or families to each load up a car and hit the road, rather than use mass transportation.

Where does this leave the family traveler?

The best (but less planet-friendly and more expensive option, when you include hotels) is to drive yourself, and that’s what I plan to do with my family this summer.

To heck with it.

We will explore our own backyard near Austin, and perhaps take a few short road trips to East Texas and maybe to a Bandera family dude ranch (wish me luck convincing my city kid teen to do THAT one!)

I’m not paying another dime to the airlines until I can figure out how to fly with my kids fairly comfortably, without feeling like I’m in a game of cat-and-mouse to avoid tyrannical air travel policies and price structures.

I’m smarter than that, Mr. Airline. You lose.

(My post title is a riff on a favorite saying by Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy’s daughter and a noted curmudgeon.)

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Categories
Tips

Stuck on the tarmac

Planning on travel over Thanksgiving?

You may decide to drive, take the train, cycle or even walk after seeing this video made by a passenger on Delta flight 6499.  He was stuck on the JFK airport tarmac for seven hours, with conflicting updates and no food. 

To see it on YouTube, click here.

Note the ubiquitous sound of crying children in background audio — yep, that could be you, Mom and Dad!  Oh boy….

Big hat tip to Budget Travel’s This Just In for showing this video in their post the passengers strike back.