What to expect while flying during the holiday season

Story by: Dana Daschuk

What to expect while flying during the holiday season

The holidays can be a stressful time of year, but with a little planning, it does have to be.  Here are some tips and tricks to make travelling at the holidays truly the most wonderful time of the year.

Flight Tracker

It is good to know what to expect while travelling, especially for those who don’t travel often.  Wintertime at the airport can cause many delays and cancelled flights, it is important to stay on top of updates to get through the airport more smoothly.

Online check in

Check in before your flight online to save yourself time at the kiosk and have more options to pick a seat.  Online check in can also help you from missing your flight, and double-checking gate numbers, departure time and date.  Ultimately this will save you the most amounts of time and hassle at the airport.

If you are flying with a budget airline, the importance of online check in is even more important as you can often pay twice as much for baggage at the airport and face hidden fees such as a boarding pass.

Chargers and electronic devices handy

During the holiday season, you could expect delays due to weather conditions and its important that you can stay up to date on the scheduling of your flights.  Having you charger handy could save you and your boarding pass if you chose to go green with the electronic copy, but could also save your sanity if you’re stuck at the airport with unexpected delays.

Travel insurance visa cards

You can save yourself any unnecessary disasters by booking your trips through a visa that is specialized for travelling.  The CIBC Aventura card is optimized for travellers, and when you book through CIBC with your card you get automatic flight and travel insurance.  This can save you if your luggage gets lost, flights get canceled, or any other serious of unfortunate events.

Aniqa Khan, a first year criminology student at Ryerson University, had a luggage nightmare when she was travelling to California by herself.  She said her, “luggage didn’t come into California after 3 weeks, because they sent it to Paris.  The guy that had my luggage wasn’t cooperating and didn’t speak English that well.”

The busiest travel days expected

According to Morgan Bell, advisor and public relations at WestJet, said that they are expecting high volumes of travellers the week before and after Christmas.  This is typically their busiest season.

Bell recommends that travellers arrive and plan their day with plenty of extra time in their schedule and prepare for the busyness of the holiday travel season.

Michel Poirier, a flight attendant with Air Canada said, “pack your patience” reminding guests to allow time to be flexible.

Video by: Vanessa Rogers

Infographic by: Nicole Colozza

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