6/24/19 - Travel mishaps abound

Day 8. We fly to NYC on a 9:55am flight from Calgary.  When I start to do the math, “ut oh” is my first thought.  Leave at least 2 hours for international flight puts us at 7:55am and an almost 2 hour drive from Banff to Calgary puts us at 6am out the door. Which means 5:15am wake-up call. We pack and load the car the night before.  Quite a fire drill but we make it out the door at 6:10am.  We are impressed with ourselves, only 10 mins later than goal.

 I’m feeling good until …

 Issue #1 – We drop off the car off and have a mile walk to the international terminal (Canada is big).  I have the boarding passes downloaded on my phone and ready to go.   We have to print the baggage tickets at a self-serve kiosk.  

Issue #2, I assume the 2 checked bags we have are the only checked bags, but it turns out a number of the back packs are too big for West Jet’s carry-on policy, so we end up with 5 additional bags to check.  I can’t for the life of me figure out how at the self-serve kiosk how to add 5 bags that I should have put in as check-in bags last night.  With assistance, we get the luggage tags printed.  Procced to bag check.  

 Issue #3 – I have all 7 boarding passes download on my phone and the security person disappointingly wags a finger at me – “No! Each boarding pass must be with each individual person. Go back and print boarding pass so each person is holding one.”  

 Issue #4 – We get printed boarding passes and go to the self-serve bag check. We just put the baggage printout on each bag but it turns that the boarding pass must match the bag check name so we have to scramble to figure out which bag goes with which person. 

 Issue #5 – Bags are finally checked and we get to the security check point only to find out that all liquids need to be in a clear bag they provide that is no bigger than a sandwhich bag and you only get one clear bag which we know won’t work when you’re carrying 6 months of stuff.  Everyone puts their bag on the floor and starts digging through for their toiletries and liquids.  Choas ensures as we are blocking an entire conveyor belt and people are trying to climb over and around us.

Issue #6 – International flights apparently start boarding 1 hour prior to departure.  By the time we get to the gate, they are already boarding and we haven’t eaten breakfast.  With a 5 hour flight, we risk food and make it back before the close the gate door.

I was expecting things to go wrong but I now have the dawning realization that we have a lot to learn about optimizing 7 people with international travel.