Welcome to Posts from your Archive with a travel theme… if you have stories to share that you have posted on your blog in the past you will find the details at the end of the post.

Author D.G. Kaye (Debby Gies) is a seasoned traveler and has accumulated a wealth of knowledge and experience over the years.  In this post she shares some of the joys of travel that we face when we put ourselves in the hands of airlines.

The Joys of #Travel Not! by D.G. Kaye

Traveling is hard enough these days, but add in a mix of extra city traffic, due to lane closures, construction and Toronto hosting the PanAm games, and driving in this city is a horror.

As many of you know, I’ve just returned from a week off to Las Vegas. This post is one of two (maybe three) I’ve written on my little getaway.

Within the week before I went on vacation to Las Vegas, two of our Canadian airlines had six bomb threats. And two days before I left, there was a Wildcat Strike by the fuelers of the airplanes. It was also July fourth weekend, and the U.S. was on an extra precautionary high alert.

Amidst all that commotion, you have me and my husband hoping our plane would take off SAFELY. There were two days of backlogged planes that were cancelled and delayed prior to the 5th, when we were to leave. I spent the previous day keeping an ear to the news updates, in hopes of hearing about the sudden unauthorized strike being resolved.

I went and did my 24 hour prior to flight check-in, and was happy to find that my flight, so far, hadn’t yet been cancelled. While I was surfing the Air Canada site, I thought I might as well double-check the baggage restrictions. My instincts told me that because there had been so much chatter and complaints about people getting ridiculous with the size and amount of their carry-ons, trying to avoid baggage fees, that the airlines may start clamping down at any time. No doubt, it’s those people with over-loaded carry-ons that ruin it for others. The overhead storage compartments on the plane get over-stuffed and the last stragglers on the plane often have no place to put their carry-ons.

So, naturally, as I surmised, the airlines had changed their dimensions of allowable carry-ons. Was it a coincidence these new guidelines changed within a month of my travel date? I found out that if regulations aren’t followed, our carry-ons would be checked and charged the same fee as though it were a regular bag. I also noted the standard carry-on legal size guide was somehow shortened to no longer than 21 1/2 inches long (from the previous 23″), INCLUDING WHEELS AND HANDLES. Continue reading . . .