Ed Perkins on Travel: Holiday Travel: Do Your Murphy’s Law Check

Be prepared for the worst when traveling over the holidays. Dreamstime/TNS

This time of year, as you contemplate upcoming holiday travel, include a Murphy’s Law check on your arrangements. That means considering what might go wrong with Plan A and what sort of Plan B you need. Ideally, you can find a reasonable-cost Plan B, but some on-the-spot problems can be resolved only by throwing money at them.

Airport access or parking is full. If you’re driving to your departure airport, you need to get to the terminal. Check up on your departure airport, and if either access or parking is perennially congested, you have to get there some other way. Finding out when you’re already on the way is too late for a fix. Fortunately, you have easy Plan B options:

• If access roads typically clog up on heavy-travel days, take a train to the airport if one is available.
• If airport-lot parking is likely to fill up, arrange in advance for a space: Some airport lots offer reservations, or you can arrange off-airport parking at Airport Parking Reservations (airportparkingreservations.com/) and maybe even cut the cost compared with the airport’s lot.

Your flight is canceled. When any airline cancels your flight for any reason, it owes you either a refund or a seat on its own next available flight—often only that and nothing more. And that “next flight” might be two days later. There are no easy Plan B outs.

You can ask your original airline to put you on another line: Some lines will do this, but they don’t have to. If you can find a replacement seat on another line on your own—a big if—you'll probably pay a stiff premium over the cost of your original ticket. To be prepared, find out which other lines cover your route, and if you have to arrange your own replacement flight, do it online—airport desks will be mobbed. If your trip isn’t long, you can pile back into your car (or rent one) and drive to your destination, or you can scrub the entire trip.

If you don’t accept your original airline’s offer, for any reason, you have to make sure that it doesn’t cancel your return space. And you may have to cancel some destination hotel, rental car, or other reservations you hold immediately.

Your connecting flight is canceled. If you’re canceled at a connecting hub, you face those hassles and a few more. If your connecting flight is canceled for a reason within an airline’s control, most big lines promise you “care,” including meals and overnight accommodations, until it can get you to your final destination; low-fare lines typically do not. But don’t count on it: Airlines are masters at blaming almost any glitch on weather or air traffic control. And if the airline isn’t to blame, all you get is the standard refund or next seat choice.

There’s no good Plan B. You have the same problems as in the above case. And if the airline doesn’t offer care, you’re on your own if you need to stay overnight. Have Hotel Tonight or a similar app available.

Your destination hotel is full. If an airline glitch makes you miss check-in time, a hotel is free to sell your room to someone else. And a hotel can sometimes be full even if you arrive on time. Unfortunately, a feasible Plan B may mean throwing money at the problem. If a hotel can’t honor a reservation, it’s in violation of a contract. But being in the right legally is no help when you get to a hotel desk late at night and the agent says, “Sorry.” There are no federal or state laws that demand any specific recourse: The hotel may offer to “walk” you to another spot, but no law requires it. You’re back to Hotel Tonight. And throwing money.

Don’t overthink the problem. Most of the time, you'll complete your holiday trip more or less as planned—at worst, a few hours late. But be ready for Murphy, just in case.

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