Holiday Travel Tips: Over the River and Through the Woods

Oct. 17, 2007 Special to ABCNEWS.com — -- Each year, a whole new wave of travelers descends on America's air travel system for the Christmas and New Year's holidays--barely a month after they'd taxed the same system to the utmost at Thanksgiving. So it's time--right now, before the tsunami of passengers arrives yet again--to assess what suddenly seems to be going right, and what each traveler can do to make sure the upcoming season is as painless as possible.

Recently, airline travelers have been tempted by the lofty idea of a so-called "passenger bill of rights." The premise of this newly proposed legislature is that if Congress gets involved in the airline industry again, air travel will return to a much-desired level of normalcy. In fact, it may already be doing so.

Click here to see travel tips for the holidays at our partner site, Forbes.com.

Instead, Christmas travelers need to follow a dozen or so simple "rules of the road"--or, skies--to smooth their passage through the system of airports, airliners and baggage facilities that will get them to grandmother's house on time and relatively hassle-free. These range from timing your trips, to properly layering your suitcase when you're packing it up, to watching the weather reports and printing your (online) boarding passes before you leave home.

If you follow these simple rules, I am deeply skeptical that a traveler's bill of rights is any kind of a bandwagon we need to jump on. The most compelling reason to shy away from this course of congressional action can be seen clearly by simply asking yourself: When has governmental bureaucracy been the answer to anything?

On the contrary to solving any current problems, government intervention will seismically disrupt an already fragile air system that is best solved by the airlines themselves. Despite conventional wisdom, flight delays and canceled flights are not in the best interests of airlines.

Believe me when I tell you it is no fun for the airlines' chief dispatchers to see flights sitting on the ground, awaiting clearance for take-off. Not only is it less than entertaining, it can be a costly proposition both in terms of real cost (including fuel and overtime), as well as the bad publicity and loss of future passengers.