The First Rule Of Traveling Is Never Stop Moving

This week is a busy travel period. Sunday evening, I flew from Houston to Phoenix. Monday afternoon, I spoke at the Arizona State FedSoc chapter on a panel about antisemitism. Tomorrow, I have a FedSoc double-header in North Carolina: UNC Law at lunchtime and Duke Law in the evening. And Wednesday I am speaking to the Triangle Lawyer’s Chapter in Raleigh. I fly back to Houston on Wednesday.

As you may have heard, airports are a bit of a mess now. Fortunately, so far I have avoided the mess.

On Sunday, I was closely tracking the wait times at various check points at IAH. For a brief period, the Pre-Check line was open at Terminal A with a short wait. Even though my flight was out of Terminal C, I could easily connect via the Skyway. My Uber driver took me to Terminal A. But there was so much traffic we couldn’t make it up the ramp. (The backup was due to people spilling out of the terminal onto the street.) So I hopped out of the car, got my suitcase from the trunk, and walked into the garage. On the ground floor of the airport there was this massive queue. A signed indicated the wait from that point was more than two hours. I did not get on that line, knowing the Pre-Check line was shorter. I walked around baggage claim, and up a different escalator that took me to the departures area. Because I had TSA Touchless ID, I had no wait at all. I was through security in about a minute, even as posted wait times stretched three hours.

Monday presented different travel challenges. The problem today had nothing to do with TSA. Here, I can blame American Airlines. My talk was from 12:15-1:15. My flight from PHX to RDU (Raleigh-Durham) was scheduled to depart at 4:15. That gave me a leisurely gap. As is my practice, early in the morning, I checked the inbound flight (coming from Denver), and the inbound flight to the Denver flight (coming from Charlotte). Early on, I saw that the Charlotte leg was delayed by about 3 hours and in turn the Denver leg was delayed by 3 hours. My own flight was not yet delayed, but I knew it was coming. Around 11:30, American sent an alert with the delay, and allowed me to cancel my ticket with a refund to the original form of payment. That’s all I needed to hear. American was anticipating a potential cancellation. Shortly before I had to walk over to ASU, I researched other options. I was in an American hub, so I figured flights to Charlotte would be more frequent. Charlotte is a 2.5 hour drive from Chapel Hill. Close enough. I could pre-order an Uber from CLT to Chapel Hill.

I found a flight from PHX to CLT leaving at 2:50. My event would finish at 1:15, so I would need to hustle. And if there was a long line at the airport, I would be even more squeezed. For a last minute fare, the rates were high, but not crazy. The difference between the coach fare and the business class fare was only $300, which I purchased. There were only a handful of middle seats in the back of the plane, which I would struggle with. Plus I knew I would need every minute. A business class ticket relieves the pressure, as I can board later and still have overhead space for my bag.

I was nervous about long waits at the airport. I compulsively checked the wait times for PHX at various junctures and noticed that the lines never exceeded 20 minutes or so. As I would later find out, the ICE Police were taking on many of the duties. At my checkpoint, ICE was helping people put their items in bins and ushering them through medical detectors. No, they were not asking for papers. I know some people had nefarious thoughts, but the assistance smoothed the process. I made it through security in a few minutes. I even had time to get some food for the four-hour flight.

I would use that four-hour flight productively. I read the entire Watson transcript and wrote a post about the case. At present (around 11:15 ET), I am in the Uber on my way to Chapel Hill. I should be there shortly after midnight. My original flight took off about 40 minutes ago, and will land around 3:00 AM. So yes, all this work to get to the hotel about three hours early. But I avoided the angst of waiting by a gate for four hours. That flight could just as well have been cancelled, and I would have been stuck in Phoenix for one more night.

I do not anticipate the shutdown will be resolved in the next 48 hours, so I I’ve already made provisions for Wednesday when I fly home. Clear lets you book a “concierge” experience where they will meet you at the curb and escort you through security. In most cases, paying $99 for this service seems like an absolute waste of money, but if it saves a two-hour wait, it is well worth it. Alas, IAH has no available concierge slots left for the foreseeable future. Either they are all booked, or the service has been disabled. I have one event next week, and already told the chapter that if there are four hour waits at the airport, I will have to switch to Zoom. Indeed, I worry that I could not even make my return flight given the finish time of the event and potential delays.

In sum, the first rule of traveling (as Gary Leff often says) is to never stop moving. Always be proactive, and never reactive. Keep an eye on all options, have backup plans, and don’t be afraid to change travel plans on short notice. And never try to fit a tight connection. It’s not worth it. In all my years of traveling, I have unexpectedly gotten stuck in a city overnight once. It was, fittingly enough, in Phoenix more than a decade ago.