Before I share my experience traveling through the storm, I would like to direct your attention to my other blog, which is not travel-related, on information about how to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy.
http://cattym.blogspot.com/2012/11/please-help-hurricane-sandy-victims.html
The Friday before Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, I was planning to spend my weekend in NYC as usual weekends. My travel is typically flying out on Friday night and returning Monday morning, then make it to the office right on time. However, this time the storm did look like my travel was going to be impacted.
After calling American Airlines (AA), they told me that they could not change my entire itinerary because there weren't flights impacted on Friday, and I could only change the Monday return flight. Therefore I chose the Sunday night return, even though the storm was schedule to hit on Tuesday morning. Following the storm news closely, I realized that they would be shutting down subway services and grounding flights on Monday. Even though the entire weekend was only cloudy, I knew I could not take a chance against the city plan.
On Sunday, I headed to the airport early, because whenever there's a change on the itinerary over the phone, the check in would be at the agent's desk. Also there would be lots of travelers trying to get on to the earlier flights last minute, which can lengthen the wait. Of course, the line was unusually long, maybe 50 people on the main line.
I was lucky to just qualified for AA gold, which I lined up in a much shorter line. A gentleman in front of me was very upset that AA had canceled his flight without notice and refused to pay for his cab ride home. In this situation, it really wasn't the airline's fault. If you want to be notified for any changes or cancellations to your flights, you would have to opt in with your email/phone #, it's privacy reason that the airlines would not automatically opt you in. For weather related reason, normally the airlines would not offer meals, transportation, nor free changes to or refunds from the affected flights if your ticket is non-refundable. Travel insurance should have covered that. Anyway, I was lucky to check in on time (Long line at the TSA checkpoint too, since the TSA agents had to go home before the public transportation shut down) and boarded on time. There were 100+ people on stand by for my flights and I really did feel lucky to change it earlier and avoided the hassle.
My flight took off and landed safely. On my way back home, the scenes of the streets in NYC before the storms were still very vivid to me. I kept my prayers for the people in my most beloved city.
