As I write on the weekend for a column to be published Wednesday, Dec. 4, television stations are broadcasting lake-effect storms that already have dumped 4 feet of traffic-snarling snow with predictions that some areas will get 6 feet of the white stuff.
Millions of travelers’ plans to get home from their Thanksgiving holiday have gone awry. They are sitting in cold cars on impassable highways, or trapped in over-crowded airport terminals owing to flight cancellations.
Stormy weather that closes down airports in any part of the country result in flight cancellations throughout the nation.
How many of this holiday’s stranded travelers did their homework before hitting the highways or airwaves?
I, an Air Force veteran, haven’t flown since 1992. If I ever fly again, it will be in a box because air travel has become such a nightmare, even if everything goes right and on schedule.
Yes, most people buy airline tickets before weather at the time of travel can be predicted. That’s a risk fliers take.
Few bother to think of risks associated with flying in good weather, in an infrastructure jam-packed beyond reason.
Laws limit how many hours pilots can fly without rest, but several retired pilots tell me they are glad they’re not still in the cockpit because air traffic controllers are horrifically overworked without the same protections given to pilots.
Air travel is still statistically safer than surface travel. However, my bones are too old to sleep on a concrete airport floor or to be crammed into an ever-smaller seat. On my last flight, I couldn’t put my meal tray down because it hit me in the chest.
So, I drive everywhere I go; to Southern California and Arizona; to Utah; and even to Kentucky. I’ve promised Ruth that I’ll take her to Europe as soon as they build the bridge, but they’ll have to hurry because I’m 86 years old.
Nine months ago, I got in big trouble with my family for driving home from Utah in a major snowstorm.
We hit I-15 as it started to snow, but I had studied the storm on radar broadcast on the internet as it made its way up from California.
