Travel Question
Sorry to intervene in our round the clock coverage of why 3rd parties are silly to ask a personal question.
I am supposed to give a talk at Macalester College in Minnesota on Thursday. One slight problem–the gigantic hurricane/nor’easter/Hades’ fury/apocalypse that is going to hit on Tuesday, when I am supposed to fly out. Even better, I am connecting in Philadelphia which looks like might it get the brunt of this.
Should I call US Air now and try to get them to reschedule me? I can fly out Wednesday and still make the talk, for whatever that’s worth. What travel options do I have? Does it help to try and deal with this early? Obviously I don’t want to get charged for changing my reservation. Thoughts?
Figure some of you are a lot more experienced with this sort of thing than I am.
And now back to noting that people who say that there’s no substantive difference between Obama and Romney are not to be taken seriously.
….Thanks to the beneficent corporate overlords at US Air, I was able to move my flight to Sunday at no charge. Minnesotans’ right to hear me pontificate about logging unions cannot be denied!
You are SOL — everyone will be trying to book around the probable storm, and everyone will be trying to avoid Philly. US Air may rebook you, but they will charge you. See if you can look at another airline as Plan-b to get to Detroit or Chicago as your alternative route. Also see if you can fly out of another airport in NE to get away as well.
It’s not worth it to me if I have to pay for it is the basic answer.
So another question is this–what happens if I can’t get out on Wednesday. Given such a circumstance, is there any chance US Air allows me to use the ticket for a rescheduled talk? Or is it going to be some deal where I fly out Thursday because that’s the first day they can do it and then I fly back Saturday and I just have a couple of nights of drinking in Minnesota. Which I guess could be OK too.
yeah but sometimes it’s pay or bring sleeping bag to the airport
On most tickets USA will charge you 100. to cancel/reschedule/change your flight. They give you 1 year from the cancellation date to use the ticket or lose it.
Southwest ..Providence to Chicago Midway to Minneapolis, $271 each way (Get away rate)
why 3rd parties are silly to ask a personal question
I at first read this as being about propositioning strangers in elevators.
…for a menage a trois.
Have you considered Amtrak?
Never mind; I thought you were traveling within the NE corridor.
Just a note about the NE corridor during storms:
I rIide Amtrak during the week between DC and Baltimore and Amtrak goes paws up during “weather events”.
The NE corridor runs on electric locomotives so power outages along the line brings service to a halt.
Screw Minnesota, leave now and spend a week in Paris.
You’re welcome.
+1
Going to Minnesota via Paris and, say, Tokyo would certinly solve the problem.
Tokyo is expecting Godzilla to attack this weekend. He had been veering off course to the northern Pacific, but is predicted to be driven back to land by a Northern Pacific Sea Monster. It is very unusual. Godzilla watchers have never seen Godzilla take this trajectory before. As the giant monsters draw closer, it looks like Tokyo will be hit by what experts are calling “A Perfect Monster Attack”.
Don’t listen to njorl, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Gojira attacks are *always* preceded by a swarm of offshore earthquakes, as Gojira rouses from sleeping off his last attack.
We know this, because the Japanese seismologists that fail to predict the attack in 1961 were jailed for life. So now they are 100% accurate.
There’s been no hint of offshore earthquake swarms so visiting Tokyo is okay.
Only if the flight to Paris doesn’t connect in Philly.
But I must say, that in my experience the food on the Air France Paris/Japan flights is much better than on any US carrier.
This may be the least helpful comment thread in the history of LGM…
My advice? Stay home and drink.
This may be the least helpful comment thread in the history of LGM…
That sounds like a challenge to me.
No, that’s the right call. Could get ugly here.
Believe it or not, the airlines are actually being somewhat sensible about this. If weather is going to severely impact a particular area, they’ll often let you make changes to your itinerary without a fee. Their goal is probably to avoid a huge mess at the airport, but whatever the reason, you don’t have to pay to make changes to a trip that departs from or connects through an impacted city.
However, it looks like in this instance you may not be able to change the departure from Tuesday to Wednesday, but your Thurs-Sat Plan B might work. Currently there’s a link at the top of the US Airways website regarding a travel advisory. Per the travel advisory page, “If you are scheduled to travel October 29, 30 or 31, your travel date may be changed to travel on October 26, 27, 28 or Nov 1, 2, 3 or 4″.
Good luck!
That literally just went up. It was not up when I wrote this post.
This is where having a travel agent can be a life-saver.
Too bad that we live in the 21st century, when travel agents are extinct.
I have an excellent travel agent (a friend) and I’d be happy to share her contact info with those seriously inquiring.
I think her standard fee is $40 or $50 per trip.
Not true I know a good one in the LA area. In 2011 she got me from Accra to Bishkek via and London and Istanbul thereby avoiding Lagos. Now Turkish Airlines has direct flights to Istanbul so I don’t have to worry about avoiding Lagos. The Nigerians were requiring US citizens to purchase expensive transit visas in advance. It was actually a little bit cheaper to use a travel agent and go through London on two flights since I didn’t have to buy the Nigerian visa.
You people serve in these functions for me. And without pay. Which is why I love the labor regime of early 21st century America.
We are here to server our Galtian masters.
What Marc said. Keep watching http://www.usairways.com/TravelCenter/Advisories.aspx
and call the airline. Lots of us got our trips refunded or changed for free when APSA was cancelled due to a hurricane in New Orleans.
Already changed the ticket. Worked out remarkably well and easy.
Glad it worked out. My partner once left the Bay Area on a Monday to give a talk and due to a weather event was stuck in Houston for a few days. It took a fair amount of persistence before the airline agreed to return her to a different airport via several connections on Thursday.
The “weather waivers” sometimes take a while to go up. Use that phrase, it’s what the people on reservations know. Call ASAP (but be prepared to spend time on hold), so you can get the best options for rebooking.
If it’s an option to travel ahead of the storm, take that if you can.
Amtrack $176
190 Northeast Regional
Departs: 10:14 AM
Mon Oct 29 2012
Providence, RI (PVD)
Arrives: 10:54 AM
Mon Oct 29 2012
Boston, MA – Back Bay (BBY)
Duration: 0 hr, 40 min
1 Reserved Coach Seat
1 Business Class Seat
(add $14.00)
449 Lake Shore Limited
Departs: 12:00 PM
Mon Oct 29 2012
Boston, MA – Back Bay (BBY)
Arrives: 9:45 AM
Tue Oct 30 2012
Chicago, IL – Union Station (CHI)
Station News
Duration: 22 hr, 45 min
7 Empire Builder
Departs: 2:15 PM
Tue Oct 30 2012
Chicago, IL – Union Station (CHI)
Station News Arrives: 10:31 PM
Tue Oct 30 2012
St. Paul / Minneapolis, MN (MSP)
Duration: 8 hr, 16 min
That would be some commitment to take a train halfway across the country to give a talk. Make a good story too.
Time passes easily if you are sitting in the club car.
‘pass the paper bag that holds the bottle…’
That Chicago train line is a nightmare though. I’ve never managed or known anyone who managed not to get at least a 3-4 hour delay in Chicago on the AmTrak if they’re heading into Indiana.
Only advice I have is call now. RIGHT now.
Your airline might fuck you over, but if they’re going to do that, figure it out now. Then you can go from there.
the gigantic hurricane/nor’easter/Hades’ fury/apocalypse
There was talk of a “Snowicane” around this time yesterday, but I’m not seeing any mention of snow today. Plagues of locusts and boils, however, have yet to be ruled out.
If I give in to the urge to vote for Johnson, this post will be to blame.
Are the trees in Minnesota the right height? Or does Wisconsin intercept all good trees coming out of Michigan?
Do they even call them “trees” there? For an Oregonian, they are shrubs. Which may be the point of my talk that I now need to actually write.
At least in Michigan, the reason the trees are all the right height is that they are all second growth, planted at the same time after the area was logged off.
(BTW, if you meet a lumberjack in an elevator, it’s not polite to raise the topic of logging unions)
I basically lived on airplanes in the 1990s and early 2000s. My advice is therefore dated but based on that extensive experience, I would say that you are better off booking Tuesday as originally planned.
There shouldn’t be a change fee for a cancelled flight, regardless of the cause. What they don’t cover for weather-related cancellations is the hotel. And of course, if for some reason you can’t get to the airport but the flight isn’t cancelled, you may get hit with a change fee, although if they have a waiver up this may not be the case.
BTW the latest models are trending sharply east which suggests southern New England is going to get clobbered rather than the DC area.
Let’s hope my house is standing when I get home.
The models don’t know what to make of this storm. As soon as there was a consensus on Delaware, a few of them start talking NYC, Long Island, and Cape Cod. Frustrating.
As usual XKCD has got it covered.
Yay for us in DC!
Sorry Eric
Erik, when is your talk? I might have to swing by and give it a listen. Safe travels.
josephus:
Presentations take place at 12 noon, Olin-Rice Room 250
November 1, 2012
“Working-Class Environmentalism: The International Woodworkers of America and the Pacific Northwest Forest, 1937-1994″
Speaker: Erik Loomis, University of Rhode Island
Does this mean I have to write the talk?
Also, how much barleywine should I consume Thursday morning?
All you can handle.
As a Mac grad, I wish the timing would allow me to get over there for your presentation. Hope it goes well!
If I don’t meet Walter Mondale, I’m burning the campus down.
Well, Mac does have the Weyerhauser library, so in theory it should burn very well indeed.
Then again, I never met Mondale in 4 years there, so WTF would you have to complain about?
I DEMAND MONDALE! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM!!!!
You’d have better luck with Rabbi Marshal.
Er, Marshal.
Fucking Marshak!