re: Christmas/New Years Travel Thread 2024

We got back to Chicago/ORD (from LGA) without any issue yesterday. Actually, got to our gate near 30 minutes ahead of schedule. No system or traffic in either place, so was smooth sailing

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Can see why people enjoy the Christmas Day travel.

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We've been doing this the last few years. At least in my family, we have a lot of dinner parties leading up to Christmas. After presents on Christmas morning, there isn't much else we do. At that point, might as well take advantage of less traffic (road and air) and get back to Chicago

Just returned from New York City. It was my first time there and I loved it.

Just here to report that travel back to western NY went off without a hitch. I had a good feeling the weather was cooperating when the incoming flight from Buffalo arrived about 45 minutes early, which meant no de-icing and no weather delays. The temp was a balmy 43°F upon arrival this morning and all the snow had melted away.

MCO was rhe biggest shitshow. We fave ourselves 75 minutes til our flight since I decided to check bags for the holidays, thinking this would be more than enough. Spirit's self bagging terminal and machines were all dysfunctional. I had to get an attended to override codes because it wouldn't recognize the bags and our IDs. After waiting to get all that done and sitting through lines with Spirit we lost about 25 minutes. TSA showed it would be at least a 40 minute wait. That line got through in about 45 minutes. My flight would have taken off at 7:11pm but as the time reached, we got a notification stating we were delayed another 30 minutes.

Thankfully that delay came through. We got to our gate as our boarding group was announced and made it to the flight. Landing at MSY was miserable. Flying through and around some clouds made it unpleasant and now we're waiting for weather to clear so we can get our luggage. One drive to fast food and Baton Rouge then our vacation is over.

Sooo bad news:

The lightning is bad at MSY and bags can't be unloaded even though the rain finally stopped. I've been here for 45 minutes waiting to figure out if I should drive home or wait it out.

We eventually got our bags less than 2 hours after landing. The weather was pretty terrible. After waiting in our car at the cellphone lot I heard a plane take off and knew we might be back up and running. Got our bags shortly after getting dropped off and made the fun drive home. Got to bed by around 1am and Baby BTB decided the normal 7am wake up call was still in effect today. I am tired.

DFW could be a mess later this week especially with the playoff game on friday. Im supposed to fly through on Wednesday which is supposed to be ahead of the snow but i’ve seen some future radars that show snow as early as late Wednesday morning.

At least you saw it coming two days ago!
Your scheduled time in the air is between 15-30 minutes longer than usual (it was 90 minutes on the originating flight, and you're scheduled for 120 on the way down. I'd guess de-icing delays? It's odd how the Flightaware weather radar doesn't reflect the amount of ice rolling through the DFW area like Weatherunderground does.

Ah. Especially given that it's AA, I'm sure it's the time it's blocked for and not flight time.

Any reason you're not on UA instead? It seems like you'd have more reliable flights connecting in IAH instead of DFW.