nsj's blog

holiday travels or: how i learned to stop worrying and love the layover

I hope everyone had safe travels back from your Christmas destinations.  At least, for those of you who are back already.  I'm back so that I can forecast for the North Carolina News Network, a statewide network of radio stations affiliated with WRAL.   My travels back were safe, but they were not without incident!

I spent the holiday weekend with my wife's family.  We were all visiting her brother-in-law, who is stationed at Ft. Carson, near Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Since I had to be in the office late Wednesday, I had two choices: fly home on Christmas nigh or get up very early on the morning of the 26th and fly back. 

I opted for the early morning flight yesterday, booking a flight that left the new Denver International Airport -- about an hour and a half's drive north of Colorado Springs under normal circumstances -- at 6am.  I would have to get up around and be ready to leave no later than 3:15am in order to make the first flight.  If all went according to plan, I'd arrive in Atlanta and have a little less than 40 minutes to make a "same-airline" connection to my flight to RDU.

Of course, I wouldn't be blogging from here if everything went according to plan.

While the Ft. Carson area saw nothing but flurries on Christmas Day, the northern half of Colorado, including Colorado Springs, Denver, and the strech of I-25 between them, saw a white Christmas.  I didn't realize just how white that Christmas was until I got on the road Wednesday morning.  While the road crews did a fine job making the roads travel-worthy, driving at the posted speed limit of 75mph was not in the cards.  I'd counted on that when I set my alarm the night before, and as a result, I missed the cutoff to check my bags.  No big deal, though, since my bags were small enough to be carry-ons.  Still, I had but a pittance of time to clear security and make it out to my gate.

I got to the gate as they were calling the last group for boarding.  Phew!  I'd made it. 

Barely.

I walked down the jetramp and took my seat and waited to push back from the gate, which we did a few moments later.  We didn't get very far, though -- we taxied over to the de-icing area to await our wash in heated monopropylene glycol.  That would add a delay to our flight, but I certainly didn't mind having a plane free of ice.

That is, until I remembered my connection time in Atlanta.  The 20 minute de-icing delay cut my connection time in Atlanta down to less than half, and that's not counting the amount of time to taxi from the runway to the gate.  (Anyone who's flown through Hartsfield-Jackson can tell you, that is a non-trivial amount of time.)  By the time they opened the door to the plane, my connection time was less than 15 minutes, and I had to change terminals, too.  With bags.

Fortunately the Delta flight attendants were mindful of the tight connections our de-icing delay caused, and asked everyone on the plane to let those of us with those tight connections off first.  I hustled off (thanking everyone along the way!) and scurried down the terminal building toward the train.  A short train ride later, I was in the right terminal and at the gate for my second flight -- as they were calling the last group for boarding.  Phew! I'd made it. 

Barely.

Again.

Now, when it comes to flying commercial, I'm like everyone else: the less time I spend in an airport waiting for my flight, the better.  That said, I've learned a couple of valuable lessons.  The combination of a long drive to the airport for an early morning flight in an area prone to wintry weather isn't necessarily the best for your sanity.  Oh, and short layovers are great when things go well, but there's another way to look at those layovers: margin for error.  When your margin of error is short to begin with, even the shortest of delays upstream can evaporate that margin in the blink of an eye.  Had we needed to wait in line to be de-iced in Denver, for example, I wouldn't have made the connection at all -- and might very well have been blogging from the Atlanta airport today. 

(Looking back -- and considering all the trouble I had -- I got out while the getting was good!  A significant number of flights from DIA were canceled today.  Had I tried to fly from there this morning, there's a good chance I wouldn't have made it at all.)

All in all, I escaped with naught more than a little exercise and a tale to tell.  Anyone got any other good holiday travel war stories?