17 Feb Travel Snafu or Two?

Here’s how to manage the inevitable bumps in the road during business travel

By Carrie Kirby

Olivia Rebanal was sure there was no hope, but she ran anyway. More accurately, she hobbled.

Coddling an injured foot, the frequent traveler rushed across American Airlines’ busy terminal in Charlotte, North Carolina, only to find—as she had expected—that the door to her connecting flight home had shut.

Then, something of a business traveler’s miracle happened.

When Rebanal told the gate agent that her first flight had been sitting on the runway for an hour, waiting for a gate, he said he’d try to help and disappeared onto the Jetway.

Rebanal watched through the window as the agent leaned off the end of the bridge and knocked on the cockpit window.

“The pilot looked into the terminal and saw me. I was waving, and I said, ‘Please!’ He gave me a thumbs-up!”

To Rebanal’s amazement, the plane reattached to the Jetway. The door reopened. While all this happened, a dozen other delayed passengers—including an unaccompanied minor—joined her.

Rebanal learned an important truth that helps her through her life of frequent work travel as vice president of social enterprise and community capital for the nonprofit Ecotrust in Portland, Oregon: there is always a chance that you might make that plane, so you might as well run for it.

Also, it never hurts to ask for help. Sometimes, employees can bend the rules to help you out of a jam. “I try to approach all these travel hiccups with that hope for humanity and the understanding that I’m dealing with a human,” Rebanal says.

Experts share other ways—in addition to having faith in humanity—to deal with the inevitable bumps in the road while traveling.

BUMP: your flight doesn’t fly when it should

When a miracle doesn’t happen and you miss that connection—or if the airline cancels your flight—the airline must rebook you. But the options agents offer may not be what works best for you.

When approaching the airline, you want to go in as informed as they are, advises Victoria Walker, senior content contributor for the website UpgradedPoints.com. That means knowing not only what the next flights to your destination are but also that the airline may be willing to put you on a different carrier.

“Once, I was flying from Chicago to Cedar Rapids on United, and it got canceled. They rebooked me on American,” Walker says.

If the airline won’t put you on another carrier, you can always take matters into your own hands and buy a ticket, then ask your employer for reimbursement. In that case, travel
advisor Dr. Terika Haynes suggests that you leave no stone unturned.

“People forget about the smaller airlines, like Allegiant. They don’t always come up in searches,” says Haynes, founder of the travel agent firm Dynamite Travel. Those smaller carriers, as well as budget carriers, sometimes have departures later in the evening.

Travel experts also advise looking beyond the airport where you’re stuck to nearby airports, rail stations, and even rental cars.

Liz Sturrock, chief of Multiple Listing Service and innovation for the Miami Association of Realtors, recalls when she was stranded in Philadelphia by multiple cancellations. She really needed to be in Albany, New York, the next morning for work. In the airline lounge, she met a woman in the same pickle.

The pair ended up splitting a rental car and driving the four hours.

“I paid for the car. She paid for the gas. I dropped her off, dropped the car off at the airport, and took a taxi to my hotel,” Sturrock recalls.

BUMP: your hotel has no room for you

Did you know that, not infrequently, guests with reservations arrive at hotels only to learn that they’re being shuffled off to a different hotel?

“We’re talking about valid reservations that you have a confirmation number for,” Walker says.

It’s called getting “walked,” and it’s not fun, especially if you arrive at night or if the hotel’s location or amenities are important for your work.

The best solution for this problem is to avoid it to begin with, Walker says. Do a little research, looking for clues that the hotel you’re about to book will be crowded during your stay.

“I always look to see if there are any big conferences happening there because [attendees] are going to take first priority, followed by people with elite status,” Walker says.

Who will get the last priority?

“Typically, people who book with OTAs [online travel agencies] are walked first,” Haynes warns.

To avoid getting walked, book directly with the property and stick to chains where you have status in the hotel’s loyalty program. But if you do get walked, it doesn’t hurt to ask the hotel what they can do to make it up to you. And if you have business at the hotel you booked, ask if there’s a shuttle from the other property.

BUMP: you made it to your destination, but your baggage didn’t

Sturrock was in Florida one fall day when she found out about a meltdown at Chicago’s O’Hare airport that would prevent her from flying home on schedule. Fine—the seasoned road warrior went ahead and booked a new flight directly to her next gig, a speaking engagement in Syracuse, New York.

She had only two problems.

“One, I didn’t bring enough prescriptions with me,” she says. “That’s a mistake I’ll never make again. Two, I had Florida clothes. I did not have fall in New York clothes.”

What Sturrock did have was her cell phone and a little time before takeoff. During those minutes, she managed to arrange for a smooth arrival, hitting an online shop for “a little black dress and a pair of shooties with heels” for store pickup and setting up a prescription refill at a pharmacy near her hotel.

To stay flexible on the go, keeping your phone alive is key, Sturrock advises. “Keep your chargers close—or have a battery pack.”

Rebanal has also had a wardrobe malfunction or two on the road. Once, on the way to a conference, the only pair of shoes she could find at the airport were water shoes. She chose a black pair that she hoped could pass for dress flats—and wore them through five receptions and 15 meetings.

In the all-too-frequent case that the airline loses track of your bags, you can use a luggage tracking service. Haynes provides clients with a membership service that will track down their bags and deliver them to their lodging. The traveler makes the report and gets the claim code at the airport, then the service takes over from there.

BUMP: your passport might not pass muster

Walker meant to renew her passport before that wedding in Mexico. She really did. But before she knew it, she was a week from departure—with no valid travel document.

The good news, Walker learned: “It is possible to get a passport within 12 hours.”

The bad news: “You’re going to pay a lot of money to do it.”

Walker ended up paying $650 to an expediting service for a new passport in three days. She could have scheduled an “urgent travel” appointment directly with the US Department of State at a lower cost. But Walker felt more comfortable going the third-party route.

For Rebanal, the passport problem befell one of her traveling companions: Her brother, in his 20s at the time, presented a passport at the Salzburg, Austria, airport that looked “like he might have dropped it in the toilet.

“You couldn’t really make out the signature. The paper was kind of starting to disintegrate,” she recalls.

Her brother almost missed the extended family’s flight, but authorities let him through at the last minute. “He just had to be interrogated for a little bit.”

Another common snag is finding out that your passport doesn’t have enough validity to meet the requirements of the countries you’re visiting.

“A lot of countries do require at least six months’ validity. So even if your passport isn’t expired, not having that six months essentially means your passport is expired, in the eyes of that country,” Walker warns.

Many heartbroken travelers in this situation have had to reschedule their flights and head to an expediting office.

The best medicine in this case is prevention, Walker says. Now, she makes sure to start the renewal process about a year before her passport expires. EW

EXTRA!

Snafu Safety Nets

You may not be able to predict what bump you’ll hit next, but you can be almost certain that you won’t travel trouble-free for your entire career. Following a few travel tips can help you hit the ground running:

Book trips through a travel rewards credit card. The best credit cards cover delayed luggage (you can charge replacement purchases and file for reimbursement), primary rental car accident coverage, and trip interruption or cancellation coverage.

Know your rights. In the United States, airlines are required to automatically refund passengers whose flights are canceled or significantly changed. In Europe, airlines are required to compensatepassengers up to €600.

Work your phone to get as much information as possible. Whether you’re studying the terminal map while waiting for the plane to unload or researching alternate routes around a blizzard, the more you know, the farther you’ll go.

—Carrie Kirby blogs about travel at Themilesmom.com, and writes about travel, personal finance, and technology for many publications.