greenmtngirl

HELLO!
My sister, who lives in Vail, Co was supposed to fly home (Burl, vt) on the red eye last night. Because of the blizzard out there, all flights were canceled. Her new flight lands her at JFK at 11:00 pm tonight. There are currently no flights from JFK to Burlington or Albany. She is on standby. In the event that she can't get on a flight, what would her options be at 11:00 pm? Thank you!

Rhea58

for a woman along at that time of
night I would opt for one of the
airport hotels...maybe she can
get one of the airlines to spring
for the cost??

mclaurie

1) Cab into the city and get a hotel room and take the train in the morning?

Depending on what time she will find out whether she has a flight (I can't imagine too many flights leaving after 11 pm anyway) I'd book a hotel that can be cancelled but I don't know at what hour she'd have to cancel. There are some very good prices on quikbook.com

The Salisbury and the Shelburne Murray Hill are both under $150 which is great for this time of year. There are cheaper options but not as nice.

2) If she wants to stay at/near the airport, the hotels at JFK are not great but the HI Express gets ok reviews and isn't outrageously expensive (it's still more than staying in the city!). If she has money invested in her ticket and she has to use the flight she's given and it's in the afternoon, she should consider staying in the city. Otherwise, I see Jet Blue has a 9:15 am flight to Burlington that appears to be available for $169.

J62

She can book a room at one of the right near JFK. Hilton Garden Inn, Ramada and a few others are very close and should do in a pinch.

Since she is on stanby your choices are not as flexible as you might like.

To guarantee a room at one of the hotels you'd have to pay for 1 night. If they have plenty of rooms, then she might not have to pay up front (before knowing if she'd use it).

I'd get on the phone and call a couple of hotels and see what they say about rooms

you can see a list of hotels and their location on yahoo maps.

http://tinyurl.com/y6blur

J62

Looks like we all posted at the same time. If this were not a late arrival/early departure to get home for the holidays I'd agree about going into Manhattan and making lemonade out of lemons. Given the time, date, holiday crowds in manhattan, desire to get home I'd stay near the airport and plan on early flight north.

Ryan

At that hour of the night, probably very few options on flights to Burlington. I did a quick check on Orbtiz and the JetBlue site, almost all the flights are in the morning.

If she can't get out tonight, she should ask the airline if they will guarantee her a seat on their first flight out in the morning.

If they can't guarantee her a seat on that flight or on any other flight to BVT, than tell her ask about flights to Boston or Manchester, NH.

Her only other option is Amtrak. She needs to get on the phone with them to understand her options. There's a train that heads through Albany on Friday morning. (There may be others, but that's the one I hear them announce around 7 every morning at Penn Station.)

I worked for an airline in college. One Christmas this same situation occurred. Frankly, it was a mess. We had about 500 people on stand-by for flights to Pittsburgh.

Cancellations due to snow are considered "acts of God." Meaning, the airline's obligations to cover the cost of hotels and food is non-existant.

Tell you sister to understand her options and be flexible. Also, the people at the airport are her best allies.

Good luck.

BTW, she should keep both LaGuardia and Newark open as flight options.

Ryan

Sorry, thought of one more thing to consider.

This past February we were scheduled to fly back from Florida to New York on a Sunday when a blizzard was to hit. Both my wife and I are experienced travelers and knew what a mess it was going to be on Monday when the airports in NY reopened.

On Saturday morning, we called the airline and had out reservation switched to Monday - even though they hadn't yet cancelled the flights on Sunday.

We were on a flight while numerous other people were stuck on stand-by on Monday.

My point is that she should be thinking ahead about her options tomorrow. If she's proactive about it, she may be able to secure herself a spot on a flight in the morning rather than relying on luck of a connection or standby.

MaureenB

It is still snowing in Denver and isn't supposed to let up until early afternoon. The airlines will be backed up for a couple of days, playing catch-up.

If she's still in Vail or has someplace safe to wait it out, maybe she should offer to get 'bumped' off the next flight and wait for a flight tomorrow morning. She could possibly get compensated by the airlines for the bump (if they consider it a bump), because they are going to be swamped with people trying to get out of Denver today.

Just a thought. It might be more convenient for her to stay put, than try to get to Vermont late tonight.
>-

GoTravel

I love mclaurie's idea.

Cab into the city and take the train out.

rb_travelerxATyahoo

Topping; it's almost 11pm, eta JFK

If plans are not yet confirmed, wanted to point out also that only 2 Amtrak trains go up anywhere near Burlington - the Adirondack #71 (thru Albany) lv 8:15am Arr Port Kent 2:35 and the Vermonter (#56) lv 11:30am thru Springfield MA. which DOES stop in Burlington 8:44pm

There is also $79 Greyhound service from NYC at 6am, 9:15am and 1:45pm, all taking 9-10 hours.

Buses to Plattsburgh are at 12:01am, 08:30am, 11:15am, 11:30am, 05:30pm costing about $77 and taking 6-7 hours.

Good luck, and let us know what happened.

ellenem

Amtrak also has the Lakeshore Limited line that goes to Albany and heads west through Buffalo to Chicago.

rb_travelerxATyahoo

Amtrak has 6 trains a day that go thru Albany, however Albany is still 140 miles from Burlington. No matter what, I think the sister must be at, or almost to her destination by now.

Are you going to keep us in suspense, greenmtngirl?

Anonymous

Darn, I was hoping that this had been "topped" by a report on how things turned out for the OP's sister.