It may be time to think about booking another flight if your plans will be affected by the blizzard in the Midwest. Here's what you should know to make sure your travel plans go as smoothly as possible.
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00:00 But we want to make sure your travel plans go off without a hitch, at least as much as
00:04 possible.
00:05 And here with some tips for those of you who might need a little help navigating these
00:09 tough travel times is Nick Ewan, the Director of Content at The Points Guide.
00:13 Nick, great to have you back this morning.
00:15 Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
00:17 Absolutely.
00:18 Let's dig in here.
00:19 Travel could come to a complete halt as we look through the end of the week and start
00:23 of the weekend here.
00:25 Any tips for travelers having to battle the tough weather?
00:29 I think the first thing is to stay informed.
00:32 This is not a weekend where you can just go to the airport, hit the road, and assume
00:36 that everything is going to go swimmingly.
00:38 There's potential for a lot of mess, so make sure that you have downloaded your airline's
00:42 app, make sure you're looking carefully at the weather forecast, maybe even potentially
00:46 considering postponing your trip, especially if you're traveling to or through one of those
00:50 areas that are expected to get real significant blizzard conditions in the Midwest.
00:55 I was just going to say, where's that line between saying, "Oh, we'll be fine, we'll
01:00 just leave early for the airport," and saying, "You know what, let's do it another weekend."
01:04 Any other thoughts on people having to maybe minimize those issues in terms of delays and
01:09 just the stuff that's kind of out of our control, whether it's Mother Nature or the airlines
01:13 saying, "Hey, your flight's going to get canceled."
01:15 Well, one of the really nice things that came out of the pandemic is that a lot of airlines
01:20 relax their change and cancellation policies.
01:24 If you don't have a basic economy ticket, chances are you are able to cancel a flight
01:28 and get a travel voucher for a future trip or potentially look at changing your trip
01:34 to a future date.
01:36 Really look at that forecast and think, if you're just traveling for the long weekend
01:40 and your flight gets canceled on the Friday, you can't get rebooked until Saturday or Sunday,
01:44 all of a sudden that trip is no longer really worth it.
01:47 It's really important to think, "Is it really necessary to travel right now, or can I look
01:51 at doing this some other time to avoid any of those hassles that could make the trip
01:55 basically worthless?"
01:56 Yeah, love that advice.
01:58 Hate the idea of canceling a trip, but you know what?
02:01 If it's going to make the trip no fun anyway, then what's the point?
02:04 Now let's talk a little bit more about our unfortunate blizzard here as we look through
02:08 parts of the Midwest and Great Lakes.
02:09 Any advice for those individuals with the existing travel plans?
02:13 Maybe someone's had plans in the works to go to Chicago or Detroit for months and months,
02:17 and maybe it's time to cancel.
02:19 Any thoughts on rebooking going forward?
02:22 Yeah, so definitely take advantage of some of those flexible change and cancellation
02:27 policies to look at possibly moving to a different date.
02:31 If you are still planning on braving those conditions, you definitely want to have your
02:34 airline app downloaded.
02:36 A lot of them will allow you to actually track the inbound planes.
02:39 You can see that plane is delayed.
02:42 You may not see a delay on your flight yet.
02:44 That's the other thing to point out is, even if you're not traveling through or to one
02:48 of these affected areas, if you're sitting in Atlanta or you're sitting in Dallas and
02:53 your flight is coming in from the Midwest, you may be traveling completely outside of
02:57 the blizzard zone and still be affected because your plane has to get out of one of those
03:01 areas.
03:02 So again, it's so important.
03:03 Be proactive and track all of your itinerary to make sure that you can really see ahead
03:08 of time when things might get disrupted.
03:11 Such a great point this morning.
03:12 Nick Ewan from The Point Sky, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
03:15 We appreciate you being here and we appreciate your expertise.
03:19 Hopefully no travel trouble for you coming up this weekend.
03:22 Thanks.
03:23 Stay safe to everyone out there.