Holiday travel tips to keep you mellow

The holiday season can be a stressful time, and nothing can multiply that feeling more than adding travel to the mix. Obviously, the holidays are a popular time to visit family and friends, so often the headaches seem unavoidable. If you’re traveling in the next two months, here are some travel tips to help you keep relaxed and happy…

Think off-peak: Thanksgiving is a pretty fun holiday. For those of us that do it up big, there’s always a lot of food, followed by a long weekend to slip into a turkey coma and sleep it off. If this holiday wasn’t always contained within a long weekend, it may be a little less traveled. But alas, the day before Thanksgiving and the Sunday after remain two of the busiest times to travel during the year. Most of Thanksgiving travel is by car, so it might be a good time to fly and visit your aunt across the country. If you’re driving, maybe take an extra day off and travel in on Tuesday. Driving back home on Black Friday or Comatose Saturday (I made that one up) may make sense as well. For Christmas, if you can get away with it, travel in or out on Christmas Day. The airport will be absolutely deserted.

Fly while others sleep: People hate early flights. This has nothing to do with holidays. It’s true year-round. Nobody loves waking up for a flight that boards as the sun’s coming up, but take advantage of these sleepy-heads not filling up security lines, and get out of town before they even wake up. If you’re a dad traveling with your family, you probably enjoy getting to the airport 6-8 hours before your flight (I’m partially kidding). Early flights are great because you can arrive at security 20-30 minutes before your flight starts to board. It’s seriously the best thing ever.

Get the app: I mainly fly Delta. They’re pretty cool. That’s not to say your favorite airline isn’t cool. Unless it’s Spirit. I hear some Spirit flights don’t have seats, you just lay on the floor. Is that true? Let me know in the comments section (again . . . just kidding). I like Delta because (and I’m sure they aren’t the only airline who does this) I can check-in on my app. I can download boarding passes on my app. And then I can send those boarding passes to my Apple Wallet. I can’t describe how nice it is to get to the airport early, use the boarding passes on my phone to breeze through security, get up to the gate for a short wait, and use my digital boarding passes again to get on the plane without having to deal with long lines or even talk to other humans. It’s a pleasant experience for 6:30 a.m..

Safe travels and Happy Holidays!

John Pettit

John Pettit

John Pettit is the Managing Editor for CUInsight.com. Through news, community, press, jobs and events, he keeps credit unions digitally informed throughout the day. Web: www.cuinsight.com Details