Sean Cudahy, an aviation reporter with The Points Guy, was live on the AccuWeather Network on Dec. 19 to discuss what is expected to be a busy Christmas holiday travel period.
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00:00It's all right. Airlines are projecting record numbers of air travelers this holiday season.
00:05Here are some tips on helping your trip go smoothly. Sean Cuddy,
00:08aviation reporter for The Point Sky. Thanks so much for being with us this morning.
00:13Hi, good morning. Happy holidays.
00:15Happy holidays.
00:16How are airlines preparing for these record numbers of travelers?
00:22You know, it's really something that they have dealt with over the course of
00:25this entire year. We saw the 10 busiest days ever at U.S. airports this summer between Memorial Day
00:31and Labor Day, and that trend really continued all throughout Thanksgiving,
00:34the busiest day ever at U.S. airports on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. So, you know,
00:38airlines have really, over the last couple of years, hired to levels that we haven't seen in
00:43decades. We've also seen airlines invest a whole lot of money into kind of the IT infrastructure
00:50to make those apps better so that when there's, you know, a problem, you're getting more
00:53notifications. They've introduced kind of new bag tracking tools. So really, the airlines feeling
00:59like they are set to go for this holiday season. And over Thanksgiving, you know, in large part,
01:05we saw pretty smooth sailing operations across the country.
01:09Now, we were talking about the weather, okay, and the apps and how they're improved. What can
01:14you do if weather impacts your flight if it's weather? And are airlines required to offer
01:20compensation if a flight is canceled or delayed?
01:25I'll take the second part of that first. So with respect to compensation, when bad weather is
01:30involved, a lot of the time you can kind of be out of luck. Airlines have promised to provide
01:35certain guarantees like, you know, overnight lodging, you know, meal vouchers, ground
01:40transportation coverage when you get stranded somewhere. But generally, that's going to be when
01:44it's a disruption that is the airline's responsibility. A lot of time, bad weather,
01:49that's going to be kind of out of their control, or at least that's how it's viewed.
01:52Now, there were some new federal regulations that were passed this year that make refunds
01:58automatic for passengers. You may have heard about that codified by Congress earlier this year. But
02:02that really only applies if you decide not to travel. Under federal policy, you're owed a refund
02:08for the unused portion of your ticket. If you choose to not accept rebooking, you just say,
02:14I'm going to stay home at this point. But you know, over the holidays, obviously, you're going
02:17to want to get to your destination typically. So you probably are going to accept rebooking.
02:22So you know, a lot of time, you know, you can be a little bit more out of luck if it when bad
02:26weather gets involved. I just learned a lot. Thank you. All right. So Christmas and New
02:30Year's both falling midweek. Does that spread out the busiest travel days?
02:35It does. You think about Thanksgiving, we saw the busiest day ever. It's more compressed into
02:39that timeline. Christmas, New Year's going to be kind of more spread out over a couple weeks there.
02:44We expect to just see pretty sustained volume over that period of time. You know, I was at
02:51Newark Airport last night, it was already getting pretty busy. And that's a week out from Christmas.
02:55You see some of the crowds in the terminals in video here. Yeah, it's I think it's just going
03:00to be a couple really busy weeks at airports. So those TSA agents certainly going to be dealing
03:04with big crowds at the checkpoints. And you should plan ahead if you are headed to the airport.
03:09And what are some smart tips to plan ahead to make sure your trip is as smooth as possible?
03:16Yeah, we talked about that app. I always like to have my airline app handy. Also,
03:20just, you know, if you haven't flown in a while, like play around with it. Airlines have made
03:24a lot of changes to their apps in recent months. So make sure you're familiar with it.
03:28A lot of the time, if there's a disruption, if your flight gets delayed because of a snowstorm
03:32or something like that, and you're going to miss your connection, a lot of time the airline may
03:35accept or offer you a rebooking option right there in the palm of your hand,
03:40you can make that change right there. Also, air tags. If you're checking bags,
03:44air tags can help you see the real time location of your bags. A couple of airlines just in the
03:49last few weeks have integrated the air tags into their bag tracking software. So it makes it a
03:55pretty robust tracking option. So you can kind of know exactly where your bag is at all times.
04:00I also suggest download the MyTSA app. That'll give you a kind of real time look at what the
04:06checkpoint wait times are like. The TSA says they did, you know, even during that really busy summer,
04:11they kept wait times for the standard lanes to 30 minutes or less, 10 minutes or less on average for
04:16pre-check. But still, you know, at any given time, you get a big bank of flights, a big crowd,
04:22those wait times can start to add up a bit. Excellent information. And we hope everyone
04:27has a very safe travel time this holiday, including aviation reporter for The Point Sky,
04:31Sean Cuddy. Thanks again so much for joining us and really informing us this morning. Thank you.