Hopefully everyone is with family and enjoying their long Thanksgiving weekend here in the US. How were your travels? Any delays? Stories from the road?
Hopefully everyone is with family and enjoying their long Thanksgiving weekend here in the US. How were your travels? Any delays? Stories from the road?
12 comments on “Topic of the Week: Your Thanksgiving Travel”
Had a very good flight DEN – SEA on a brand new Alaska 737-900ER plane, on
Tue., 13 Nov on the 12 noon flight to SEA.
Plane was weeks old, smelled like a new car, oops, plane…
Crew was pretty ecstatic, especially the pilots, they kept blathering about this
and that, en route, of the new plane.
New Recaro seats in coach, seat pitch was 31 inches, I measured it, but roomier than that due to seat design.
I was one of the last to board, overhead bins were full, so my bag got a free
gate check, and was waiting for me in the jetway, in SEA.
If I were the FAA, the Feds., I would require every airline to give every passenger one free checked bag, which would make boarding go much
easier, and quicker. Southwest is the proof of that…
I had a two hour layover in SEA, to meet a friend for lunch, then took the
4 pm Bombadier Q400 twin engine turbo prop to Portland, PDX, my final destination.
On board they served a large pour of beer and wine for any that wanted it, for free. !
Airport comments: as someone who worked at old Stapleton Airport in DEN, for 10 years for Continental, I am no fan of the new DEN airport, too big, too far away, blah, blah, blah.
SEA and PDX airports are my ideal airports, comfy and pleasant, huge variety of
shops and food/drink outlets.
Cheers,
Peter Richards
Boulder, CO.
i agree the denver airport sucks,..it is large crowded and tsa takes forever
No problems at all. Flew back from LAX to DFW on Thanksgiving Day instead of the day before, primarily to take advantage of the relatively cheap(er) fares. Manageable traffic to the airport, no security lines to speak of, not much in the way of crowds in Terminal 4, scored an upgrade for me and the wife, and a flight that docked at the gate at DFW 20 minutes early. Can’t really ask for better than that.
Other than both flights being packed from DCA-DFW and DFW-SEA, both on AA, it was your typical better than UA experience the day before Thanksgiving. Arrived in SEA on time. No issues – no hassles.
Flew MCO-RDU-BWI on Thanksgiving Day. No hassles at all, however, Orlando and BWI were much more crowded than I thought they would be (left MCO at 12:40). The first leg to RDU was about 2/3 full and RDU to BWI was about 3/4 full. Our SWA 737 had new seats – a nice touch. They offered complimentary adult beverages and there were “thankful” signs adorning the walls of the plane. All in all, a pleasant experience, although we did not allow enough time since we thought MCO would be a ghost town. Perhaps, Thanksgiving Day is a more popular traveling day than I thought…
Flew STL-ORD-HPN on Wednesday and hit fog delays, twice. My UA flight from STL to ORD only had 8 people on it (ERJ 145) despite being 4 hours late. Flight attendant said it was the emptiest plane she’d worked “in a long time.”
Flew DCA-DFW-COS on AA on Wed.; full-flights, but problem free!
Drove from DFW-DSM. Just way easier and a lot cheaper than trying to figure out two adults and three small kids (5, 2, 10 months). Security, crappy seats, horrible service, delays in ORD or MDW, and cost of rental cars. Just not worth it. If the trip is under 1000 miles, and/or not near a big airport, we just drive it. Granted, we are crazy Texans, which means we drive a lot anyways, but its just a better overall experience.
Flew WN 4754 on 11/21. SKD Dep PHX at 7:25 Arv. TUL 10:35. At 2PMish, received my flight status text from WN stating flight would depart PHX at 10PM. After gnashing of teeth, modifying plans, alerting family to change sleep patterns, received flight status update text from WN about 1.5 hours later stating departure time now 7:45 PM. Stopped gnashing teeth, alerted family to restore sleep patterns, enjoyed free beverage on flight.
Certainly we were pleased because our flight was no longer 2.5 hours late and due to arrive in the middle of the night – WN made some happy campers. But we went through a lot of work, and reviewed options, etc. because of the original drastic time change – I am not complaining, because it turned out much better. But should WN have sent out the original text? … or should they have held on waiting until they were closer to having a reaccomodation solution? I am kind of torn.
As usual though, the crew was nice and the flight was packed.
John – We track Southwest flights a lot, and they generally do things like this. If there is a delay earlier in the day on that same flight number, they’ll nearly always push every flight operating under that flight number by the same amount of time. Sometimes, they’ll stretch it on to the next flight number as well.
Looks like 4754 just operates LAX to PHX to TUL, so I wonder if maybe the flight before routed through SFO. This sounds like an air traffic delay that got lifted or something along those lines.
Flew Jetblue flt 47 from JFK To FLL on 11/23.
The worst possible thing happened that could happen happened. Delay? no. Mechanical problem, no.
Yes…It happened. The TV’s weren’t working for the entire 2 1/2 hour flight. And people we’re getting belligerent with the flight attendents for this horrific lack of entertainment.
Sad.
Got to LGA and bam CANCELLED…was suppose to go to Florida to visit family and instead had to stay in NYC. And in case you guys don’t know we had Hurricane Sandy and a nor’easter so Thanksgiving was rough overall.