Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Well, more like buses, but I thought I would share my painful travel experience, as I think a lot of people will be able to relate, especially those who have traveled through winter weather. We were scheduled to fly from Toronto to New York (LaGuardia Airport) on Friday March 16th at 12:30pm. Before we left the apartment at 9:00am, I checked the GTAA website to ensure our flight was on time, I tend to do this before leaving…just in case. As it were, all flights were on time, so off we went to Lester B Pearson International Airport. We arrived at 10:00am and proceeded to the express check-in for Air Canada. I swiped my card, and “Transaction can not be completed”, so I tried it again with the same result. That is odd, I thought to myself. An Air Canada representative came over to ask me where I was flying to, when I told him New York he informed me that they just cancelled all flights into LaGuardia for the rest of the day due to inclement weather.

Luckily we were able to snag the last two seats on a flight leaving at 12:25pm to Westchester (about a half an hour outside New York City). We got checked in, checked our luggage, and got bussed off to a small terminal inside Pearson. It is 11:45am, and we were supposed to board a small eighteen-seat plane in five minutes. Everything seemed okay so far, except we did not have a plane yet. The plane we were taking was coming from Westchester, was going to load up, turn around and fly back, but it had yet to come in. Waiting, waiting, waiting, and finally, cancelled. We headed over to the Air Canada desk in the small terminal, and quickly booked the next two available seats on the earliest flight possible. The earliest flight provided, Saturday March 17th at 8:30 PM.

We now jumped on the bus back to the main terminal and had to fill out custom cards like we had been out of the country. Finally got through customs and after the officer made us completely fill in the card, we proceeded to the baggage claim area. Instead of both of us waiting, my girlfriend waited for our luggage, and I continued back upstairs to the departure check-ins where they had direct lines to Air Canada agents. We did not want to wait until 8:30 the next night, so we started looking at flying to nearby cities so we could bus it to New York and get there Friday night. The only problem, pretty much every city in the north eastern United States was getting hit by this storm and airports were shutting down everywhere.

There were two flights still “on time”; one was going to Hartford (about a three hour bus ride) the other going to Albany (a slightly longer bus ride). At this time, it is about 1:30pm, and my girlfriend was still in the luggage claim waiting for our bags, which never left the airport, let alone even boarded an airplane. Eventually Lisa returned with our luggage, and had met another traveler in the same predicament. We tried to call other airlines, but every line was busy. Our new friend lived close by, and headed back to her place to do some investigating on-line. My girlfriend and I remained at the airport and we wavered back and forth about the Albany and Hartford flights. Do we change our Saturday 8:30pm flight to one of the two options, take the risk of the flight being cancelled last minute, and not be able to book another flight until Tuesday!? Finally we made the decision to try the Hartford flight, and as I was speaking with the agent, she talked me out of it. She told me that the conditions were getting worse, and the likelihood of those flights leaving was slim.

I decided to call VIA Rail to see if we could jump on a late day train into New York. Via Rail informed me that they only depart to New York City in the mornings, 8:30am, which would have gotten us into Manhattan at 9:45pm (slightly earlier than if we flew). The pros of taking the train: The train would be leaving, despite the storm. It was about $100 cheaper, and got us right into Manhattan arriving under Madison Square Gardens. The cons, it did not get us there early enough to really make that much of a difference and we would be on a train for 13 hours. At the very least, still an option.

We had lunch, yum, airport food, and headed home. $120 spent on cabs to go nowhere! When we got back to the apartment, I jumped on GTAA to check out the flights for tomorrow, and they had already begun cancelling the early morning flights to LaGuardia. I did not want to sit around all Saturday waiting to see if they were going to cancel our flights, so I called Via back. Via Rail allows you to book tickets, and if you have to cancel them, you can do so without penalty up to an hour before departure. I booked three one-way tickets to New York, departing at 8:30am Saturday morning. This way we could wake up at 7:00am, check the website, and if we felt uncomfortable about the status of our flights, we jump on the train.

It is about 7:30pm now; I have listened to more automated voice messages then ever before, been on hold with Air Canada for countless hours, and in return, got to listen to thirty-second loops of Celine Dion. Needless to say, I cracked a bottle of wine. Just as I was half way done my first glass, my girlfriend’s phone rang; it was our friend from the airport. She had found a bus leaving the downtown Toronto terminal at 9:30pm that would get us into New York City at 7:30am. We decided to give it a go, only problem was, we could not book tickets over the phone. We grabbed our stuff, and hopped in a cab to the bus station to purchase three tickets, which again, was cheaper than flying. The one hitch about the bus tickets was they were not guaranteed. Your ticket did not reserve you a seat, you had to wait in line in order to do that.

It was 9:30pm, we were already exhausted, but we were officially on our way. I thought it would be a good idea to get on hold with Air Canada to try and cancel our Saturday flight and get our money back. It was not a good idea, thirty-five minutes into the call, and about six hundred thousand Celine Dion loops later, I broke, and hung up.

The roads were not great, and we arrived at the boarder an hour behind schedule. Customs is fun when you are crossing the boarder on a bus. They make everyone get off in the freezing cold, and proceed to unload your bags onto the sidewalk. Everyone then lines up in a room the size of a college dorm, and waits to be grilled by a customs agent at 1:30 in the morning. Good times. Finally got out of there and we made a stop in Buffalo, New York. This was where we were to change bus drivers.

The new bus driver was collecting tickets, and doing his headcount when the bus mysteriously shuts down. He started it back up and continued his job. We departed Buffalo, back on our way to New York City, but the bus stalled again. The driver started the bus, and we carried on. After going through a tollbooth, the bus stalled yet again, and just like before the drive got her going and we continued. The bus stalled again, and this time the driver got out and did something under the hood, which seemed to fix the problem. At this point the driver was calling dispatch and arranging an unscheduled stop in Rochester, New York to pick up a new bus. Good idea! We got through another tollbooth just past Batavia, New York when, you guessed it, stall. This time it did not look good. The driver got out and checked under the hood, but to no avail. He made the call we were dead. He was informed that there was a bus that was about 45 minutes behind us and would be able to pick us up, but we were stuck until then.

The “rescue” bus arrived, only it was about half full, twenty people, and we had forty. That meant passengers got to stand. Obviously people were very unhappy, and what was better then spending Friday night with unhappy bus passengers on a cold wintry overnight bus ride to New York City? It was 7:30am, and the bus made a rest stop to grab some food; only it stopped at a Wendy’s. Not sure the first thing I wanted to eat, was burgers and fries after sitting ten hours on a bus, nor did I want to be stuck on a bus full of people that just ate burgers and fries for another three and a half hours.

11:00am Saturday morning; we finally arrived in New York City. It only took two cancelled flights, one near train ride, three buses and fourteen long hours. The only travel we had left was getting home. The storm had moved on, airports were back up and running and we were good to get home, right?

We showed up to the airport two hours early for our flight, just to be safe. Our flight was delayed ten minutes, no big deal. We boarded, and were only about 20 minutes off schedule. As we were pushing back from the gates we got an announcement from our pilot, there seemed to be a backlog of planes yet to depart, a backlog of forty planes. How any airport gets an accumulation of forty planes waiting to take off is beyond me. So we sat on the tarmac for an hour before we actually took off. A flight that should have taken an hour and fifteen minutes, took us three hours, and that did not include waiting for luggage and cab home.

Living in a country where the weather plays a very large factor when it comes to travel can be arduous, and I know I am not the first or last person to have to deal with it. I am positive many people have gone through much worse. In fact, I am sure hundreds of thousands of people have the same story as I this past weekend. Weather is part of traveling; it can lead to many good stories and teach us lessons we would not learn otherwise.

On the other hand, New York was great, and I will be sure to post something soon on it. Feel free to share your travel stories with me at info@thetravelrecord.com.