Travel tips arise from rocky trips in skies

Rest assured that the vast majority of travel goes smoothly.

I was reminded of that recently when I requested travel horror stories from readers and received, among tales of woe, more than a few e-mails from kind souls who said, in essence, travel is terrific, so why dwell on the negative?

My answer: Because one person's bad experience is another's cautionary tale.

Nationwide, about 4.5 million people are expected to fly during the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend alone, according to American Automobile Association, and that's just the start of the busy holiday season. Now seems an opportune time to share a few travel tips, even if they are based on the mishaps of others.

As you read on -- through stories of chewed-up luggage and missed planes and suggestions on how to avoid similar situations -- remember what reader and well-seasoned traveler William Nagle of Apple Valley wrote to me in an e-mail: "We are fortunate to be able to travel from state to state and continent to continent the way we do. Airlines do the best they can, and their number one priority is safety."

There goes my plane! The trouble: bumpety- bump

Several people told of being bumped off flights, but none experienced more prolonged discomfort than Hoang Ngo of Minneapolis. Ngo arrived at the Las Vegas airport half an hour before his 9 a.m. Northwest Airlines flight was scheduled to depart. The airline refused to let him board and suggested he wait for the next flight. Five overbooked flights later -- after a missed day of work and 27 hours in the Vegas airport -- Ngo finally made it home.

While you might squeak by in getting to the airport half an hour before a flight departs, holidays are not the time to try it.

Northwest's website says that travelers should arrive 75 minutes prior to departure for domestic flights and two hours before international flights. Furthermore, "If you do not check in for and board your ticketed flights by the specified time, all segments of your flight itinerary may be cancelled and the value of your ticket may be lost."

Arriving early becomes increasingly important during a busy flying season, when it typically takes longer for travelers to move through ticketing, baggage and security lines.

Plus you don't want to give airlines a reason to bump you. According to the Official Airline Guide, the global airline-schedule data company, airlines are expected to cut capacity by nearly 9 percent compared with a year ago. The squeeze could make it more difficult for travelers to find space on another flight when they are bumped, miss a connection or their planes are grounded.

The American Society of Travel Agents recommends getting an advance seat assignment and checking in online to ensure that you get aboard an oversold plane. Passengers with seat assignments are typically bumped only if they arrive late and their seat assignment is released. Most airlines allow you to check in online 24 hours ahead of departure. You might snag a seat then even if one was not available at the time of ticketing.

it's in the bag The trouble: mishandled bags

When John Joachim of Taylors Falls, Minn., traveled to Oklahoma City with his wife for a wedding, the suitcase the couple shared didn't make it. The morning after they arrived, Joachim went to the hotel's front desk, where the clerk reported that United had dropped off his bag. "Unfortunately, his use of the word 'bag' turned out to be quite literal," Joachim wrote. Inside a clear garbage bag were the front flap of what had once been his suitcase (with shoes still inside the zipped pocket), and piles of clothes, including his wife's new dress with a hole in it and a pair of pants that had "something that looked like a tank tread running across both legs." The couple spent that afternoon, one day before the wedding, at the mall. (Note: United sent the couple a check for $900 to compensate for the loss of the suitcase and most of its contents.)

The fix: pack carefully

Because checked luggage usually goes though some kind of mechanical conveyor system, travelers should remove straps and other protrusions that could get caught, according to www.airsafe.com. Also, remember that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) must be able to inspect checked luggage. To keep yours unsullied, do not lock it unless it has a TSA-approved lock, which screeners can open with a key.

To ensure that your luggage greets you at your destination, watch to make sure that the tags the agent attaches to each piece match your baggage claim ticket -- and that it identifies the correct final airport. Also, put a business card or other piece of paper with your name and contact information both inside and outside of your bag, and put a copy of your itinerary inside each suitcase.

the unfriendly skies The trouble: unkind fliers

"While airlines doing bad things is certainly a problem, you are missing the biggest one: the idiots who are flying these days," wrote Alan vanHorn of Excelsior. VanHorn has watched passengers verbally abuse airline personnel, been stuck with nowhere to tuck his modest day pack because overhead bins were filled with oversized bags and endured a crank who complained when he reclined his seat near the end of a flight.

Then there's Mary Carolyn Youngquist of Coon Rapids, who stayed calm, despite feeling slightly claustrophobic, when an obese woman squeezed in beside her on a flight. Youngquist, who was in the middle seat, wrote: "It's wrong to chastise people for being grossly overweight when we know nothing about their situation, but isn't it equally wrong to sit on fellow passengers?"

The fix: model kindness

The good news for Youngquist and anyone who has felt the warm pressure of a stranger's thigh against their own: Southwest Airlines, which will begin flying from Minneapolis in March, requires obese passengers to purchase a second seat. At Delta, the airline will try to place a large passenger next to an unoccupied seat, but if the plane is full, that person might be asked to leave the flight and buy a second seat on the next available flight. But it is a tricky business -- not to mention impolite -- to determine who is too overweight to fit into a seat, which is why so few airlines have hard and fast rules.

Another reader, Gloria Gardner, echoed Nagle's words with this advice: "Pack two senses: your common sense and your sense of humor. Traveling hasn't gotten any easier over the last few years, but with common sense and a sense of humor, it's still great."