Just Back - Flew out of Buffalo!

[Jo-Anne]

DH and I just returned from a last minute 5 day anniversary trip - just the two of us. I had a small credit left over from Southwest so we decided to fly out of Buffalo. When I woke up Friday am, I went on line to get our boarding passes and we were the 6th and 7th people to get A boarding passes. Highly recommend doing this as we got stuck with C's on the return and we were at airport 1.5 hours in advance. We drove from TO down on Friday morning and got stuck at border for 25 minutes at 9:30 in morning, but still had lots of time. When we got to airport, we parked in preferred long term parking (cost of $42 USD) and went to check baggage (took all of 5 minutes) and then went to gate. Unfortunately due to weather delays on the inbound plane, we were 1.5 hours late leaving. Other than that, trip down and back uneventful. We stayed at Port Orleans Riverside, rented a car from National and did some nice dinners at Boma, B&C, Wolfgang Puck and Cali Grill (I posted on restaurant board). We had 90 degree weather every day and not a drop of rain...I hear the long weekend up here in Ontario was lousy with rain and cool temps - so sorry for those who were here! Now back to reality! Any questions, ask away! Jo

 

[MaMudduck]

AAAAwwww.....nice little trip. Welcome home.

 

[Hockeychic]

also. However, my question is about security, I am scared to fly at the best of times but since 9/11 I am terrified. I was thinking the security in the States would be tighter then in Canada so outside of the money savings I was feeling safer flying out of the States. What was your impression???

Glad you had a nice trip.

 

[DisneyLisa]

Welcome back and Happy Anniversary. What a way to spend the long weekend (yes the weather here was pretty crappy - could have been worse but definitely could have been much better). I'm off to the restaurants board to read your reports.

 

[TimNDansMom]

Glad you had a wonderful little trip! Welcome home and Happy Anniversary!

We did the same thing last August and I remember thinking that I couldn't believe that I was at Disney because my next "planned" trip wasn't until October. We flew down from Buffalo, to pick up a car and drove it back. We were gone for 4 days. Would love to do it again but fly both ways, of course.

 

[DisneyLisa]

Gee Julie...your countdown timer looks just like mine.

 

[RoyalCanadian]

I've never flown with Southwest but just might do so from BUF in January. What is the difference between the boarding passes? I don't understand that one -- I'm used to the concept of "A Boarding Pass is a Boarding Pass."

 

[RoyalCanadian]

Originally posted by Hockeychic
also. However, my question is about security, I am scared to fly at the best of times but since 9/11 I am terrified. I was thinking the security in the States would be tighter then in Canada so outside of the money savings I was feeling safer flying out of the States. What was your impression???

I flew from Toronto to New Orleans in October -- no difference in security.
I flew from Toronto to Paris to Berlin, and then from Munich to Paris to Toronto earlier this month -- no difference in security.
In all places the luggage was thoroughly checked; the security agent in Paris was able to tell me exactly what I had in my carry-on luggage, down to a toy car for my daughter and at no point did I feel any danger.
Flying is the safest form of travel and airports are some of the safest places to be. Heavily armed police officers were visible in Toronto, Paris, and Munich. I wasn't in the Berlin airport long enough to experiene the police presence there.

 

[Jo-Anne]

Hockeychic - I didn't feel any more security in US at the airport than in Toronto airport. In fact, in TO, I'm used to showing my photo ID at more checkpoints than I did in Buffalo. I know its hard to get over the mental fear with all that is going on these days, but as Neil said, flying is a pretty safe form of transportation and far more security than prior to 9/11.

Neil- Southwest doesn't provide specific seating. They have preboards (those with children under 5 and those needing assistance), A, B & C designations. When you checkin, you are given one of those designations depending on the time and method of checkin. About 20 minutes before the flight is about to board, people start lining up in these lines for whatever designation they have on their boarding pass and that is the order you board the plane, so no guarantees on where you sit or if your entire party will be sitting together! They have a new on-line check in process that at 12:01 CST (I think - whatever Dallas time is!), you can go on line and enter your confirmation # and last name and get a boarding designation - I got up at 6:15am on our day of travel and was able to get both of us an A so we got a good selection of seats. By the time all the C's board it's usually only middle seats or very back of plane seats left. If you do the online boarding, you have to have a separate confirmation number for everyone in your party, so if you haven't bought your tickets and want to do online boarding passes, book everyone separately or phone them prior to departure to get everyone separate numbers. I'm being very winded here, but folks on the Transportation board know lots more about Southwest if you have questions. Jo