Economy makes for tougher Thanksgiving journeys

JASON KEYSER

Asso­ci­ated Press

CHICAGO — Mil­lions of Amer­i­cans piled their fam­i­lies into cars, hopped on buses and waited out delays at air­ports Wednes­day as they set off on Thanks­giv­ing treks that many said required finan­cial sac­ri­fice, help from rel­a­tives to come up with air­fare and hours search­ing online for deals.

Accept­ing that the road out of the reces­sion will be long, many said they’ve become savvier or at least hardier trav­el­ers — resilient enough to brave a day-long drive with the kids or a long haul by bus instead of fly­ing. Oth­ers adjusted their travel sched­ules to try to save money, fly­ing on less pop­u­lar days or to air­ports that were a bit far­ther from their destination.

The weather, along with the econ­omy, handed set­backs to some. Heavy fog shrouded Chicago, caus­ing more than 1,600 delays or can­cel­la­tions in and out of its two air­ports and send­ing rip­ples around the nation.

And at New York City’s Penn Sta­tion, a power fail­ure in a switch­ing sys­tem halted all trains for more than an hour at the height of the evening com­mute. It caused delays of 90 min­utes or more on Amtrak and two of the nation’s busiest com­muter railroads.

The effects of Super­storm Sandy added to the has­sle for trav­el­ers on the East Coast.

Chris McLaugh­lin, a 22-year-old senior at Boston Col­lege from West Chester, Penn., had hoped to com­bine his trip home for Thanks­giv­ing with a med­ical school inter­view in Philadel­phia, but the storm delayed his inter­view, so he’ll have to make an extra trip home next month. He fig­ured that would cost him another $200.

“It killed me,” McLaugh­lin said of the finan­cial impact of the storm, which also left his par­ents with­out power for eight days. “I think we were feel­ing we could loosen up a lit­tle bit (finan­cially), but with Sandy and every­thing that hap­pened, (peo­ple) feel like they can’t.”

And it’s not just fam­ily finances that are tighter. Air­lines strug­gling to save on jet fuel and other expenses have cut the num­ber of flights, lead­ing to a jump in air­fares. Those hit­ting the roads face high gas prices and ris­ing tolls.

After a cou­ple of years of healthy post-recession growth, Thanks­giv­ing travel this year was expected to be up only slightly, 0.7 per­cent, from last year, accord­ing to AAA’s yearly Thanks­giv­ing travel analy­sis. Among the 43.6 mil­lion Amer­i­cans expected to jour­ney 50 miles or more between Wednes­day and Sun­day, more were dri­ving and fewer were fly­ing. Their planned trips were shorter too, by about 120 miles on aver­age, the travel orga­ni­za­tion said.

As car own­er­ship declines among younger Amer­i­cans, many of those hit­ting the road were jump­ing onto buses. Inter­city bus ser­vice has grown in recent years with curb­side com­pa­nies like Megabus.

At a Grey­hound ter­mi­nal in down­town Den­ver, Eileen Lind­buch­ler, a 32-year-old mas­sage ther­a­pist, hauled her bulky mas­sage table through the line to board a bus. She had used her iPhone to coor­di­nate bus sched­ules and con­nect­ing routes for the 65-mile jour­ney to visit fam­ily in Col­orado Springs and expected the effort to save her money.

“I think it’s going to be a lot cheaper,” she said. “I want to see how it works. I’ve always had to travel by car.”

Aided by smart­phone apps, social media and other tech­nol­ogy, con­sumers are get­ting bet­ter at sniff­ing out deals and real­ize they need to be flex­i­ble with dates and even the air­ports they chose when book­ing, said Court­ney Scott, a senior edi­tor at Travelocity.

“I think peo­ple are really becom­ing smarter, more cre­ative trav­el­ers and shop­pers,” Scott said.

Some­times, though, no amount of cre­ativ­ity with an air­line book­ing can avoid break­ing the bank for those with large families.

So, Linne Katz and her five chil­dren hit the road, leav­ing their home in Hale­don, N.J., at 1 a.m. Wednes­day in hopes of get­ting to her father’s home in Ten­nessee while the sun was still up. Dri­ving has down­sides, she said.

“My old­est keeps hav­ing to go the bath­room. … I think he’s get­ting car­sick,” Katz said, as she stopped to take pic­tures of her chil­dren under the “Vir­ginia Wel­comes You” sign at an I-66 rest stop near the Man­as­sas National Battlefield.

And even with all the alter­na­tives to fly­ing, some still said they couldn’t afford the journey.

Lisa Apple­ton, 42, of Sandy Springs, Ga., said she lost her job as an account­ing man­ager dur­ing the hol­i­days last year. Her new job at an ice skat­ing rink pays less, and she said that forced her to skip her usual Thanks­giv­ing road trip to visit fam­ily in north­east Ohio.

“This is the first year that I have not gone in like five years,” she said. “It seems weird to me.”

She planned to spend the hol­i­day at home with her 23-year-old son, eat­ing and watch­ing foot­ball. After check­ing air­line prices, she decided they’ll also stay in Geor­gia for Christmas.

“It breaks my heart, but it’s some­thing you’ve got to do,” she said. “If you don’t have the money, you just — you can’t do it.”

Posted by AP News on Nov 22 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.