Thanksgiving travel: How to weather the winter storm
(CBS News) Three days before Thanksgiving, large parts of the U.S. are facing a large winter storm threat. The system dumped heavy snow and ice on parts of the West is now heading across Texas and the South. So far, the bad weather is blamed for eight deaths and it’s expected to cause serious problems for the 43 million Americans predicted to travel for the holiday.
CBS News travel editor Peter Greenberg told the “CBS This Morning” co-hosts that he’s concerned because no matter what the weather situation, traveling the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is always difficult.
“Any time, even in good weather, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is a suicidal day to travel…so, now you have a perfect storm, if you will, between weather, more people flying on fewer flights and now higher airfares,” he said.
Greenberg said that there are two things that passengers can do before they head to the airport to try and avoid a travel disaster.
“You want to have a conversation with the airline, but it’s the question you ask,” he said. “You don’t call and say ‘Is my flight on time?’ Because they’ll interpret that as ‘Is it scheduled to leave on time’ – that’s meaningless information. What you want to do is say to them, ‘Can you tell me the aircraft number assigned to my flight?’ They know that. It’s the tail number of the plane… And then you say ‘And where is that tail number?’”
Greenberg explained that by knowing where your plane actually is, you’ll be able to tell if it can get back to you.
“If that tail number is in Belize and you’re in Boston – you’re not going to Chicago,” he said. “Now you know ahead of time.”
He also explained that there are some good smartphone apps that can help predict if flights are delayed.
“’Flight Tracker’, ‘Flight Stats,’ they have a great delay and cancellation page, but you have to remember the airlines are getting hip these days,” he said. “They are not necessarily updating their websites as fast as they’re updating their Facebook and Twitter page – get on those pages to find out what’s going on.”
Greenberg said that the departure board is not always the most helpful in predicting flight delays or cancellations.
“What you want to do is look at the departure board for only one piece of information – the gate you’re supposed to leave from,” he said. “Then, go immediately to the arrivals board to see if they’re arriving at that gate. Now, if nothing is arriving at that gate until Tuesday, why would you go to that gate?”
He said that’s when passengers should actually call their airline, but Greenberg explained that they can make that phone call earlier.
“A lot of airlines are beginning to wave a lot of the cancellation and penalty fees ahead of time,” he said. “They are doing some pre-emptive deals that are helpful to you. In fact, encouraging you to leave a day earlier and some airlines are saying if you leave Tuesday instead of Wednesday, they’ll even give you a bonus.”