When I heard on the news the expected volume of 2023 year-end holiday travel would be the second-highest in a decade, I promptly changed our winter travel plans to January, after the holiday rush. I had visions of the interruptions, snafus and cancellations suffered in great numbers this past summer.

Some of these problems were caused by bad weather. The recovery from the COVID pandemic was also a cause of problems. Finally, problems with airplanes, railroads and ships caused many of the delays last summer.

My wife and I had two interruptions during our travel last summer. Fortunately for us, the disruptions were minimal. But for my son and daughter-in-law, trying to travel from Newark to Dubrovnik, the interruptions included spending the night sleeping in the airport (see pictures) and missing most of the first day of their bicycle tour in Dubrovnik.

They had reservations for a direct flight to Dubrovnik from Newark. Unfortunately, it was the same day as the really intense storms in the New York area. They boarded their flight, and the flight left the gate for the runway. The plane was waiting on the tarmac to take off. And it sat and sat, and finally the pilot announced too much time had elapsed since leaving the gate and he could no longer complete the flight to Dubrovnik. In English that is called “timing out”.

The plane returned to the gate and my son started looking for alternative flights to Dubrovnik. They were lucky to find seats on a flight to Dublin, Ireland, with a connection to Dubrovnik. They boarded the plane and the flight left the gate. Again the plane waited on the tarmac, and again the pilot announced he had timed out.

Somehow they found a third flight that would get them to their destination at a reasonable time. So they boarded that flight. But it never left the gate. It appeared someone whose luggage was loaded onto the plane did not board the plane. So all the luggage needed to be removed to find the offending luggage. By the time this process was completed too much time had passed, and this pilot also timed out. After a night at Newark airport (see photo), they took a flight the next day and arrived 24 hours late, missing the first day of their trip.

About two weeks after my son and his wife took their trip, my wife and I traveled to Norway for a cruise through the Norwegian fjords. I booked a flight that left Washington for London early in the morning. I planned to spend the night in a hotel right in the London airport and continue to Oslo the next day. When we were in the middle of the Atlantic, I received a text from British Airways saying the flight I booked the next day from London to Oslo, Norway, was canceled and they had booked us on a flight a day later.

I was nervous the rest of the flight about not being able to find substitute transportation from London to Oslo. When we arrived at the hotel in London, I tried calling the local British Airways number but couldn’t get through. I tried the U.S. 800 number for British Airways and, surprisingly, it connected. I explained that a one-day delay would not be acceptable since we were planning to take a cruise from Oslo. Again, surprisingly, the agent was helpful and booked us on Lufthansa flights to Oslo with the plane change in Frankfurt. And we were only a few hours late arriving in Oslo.

The second snafu on this trip proved all delays and problems do not necessarily involve air travel. Our cruise was on a small ship, Le Dumont d’Urville. Part of the fleet of the French company Ponant, Le Dumont d’Urville carried about 170 passengers.

On Day Five of the eight-day cruise the passengers were off the ship sightseeing around Loen, Norway. At the end of the day we took a cable car, the Loen Skylift, to the top of the fjord. We could see our ship at anchor in the water below (see pictures). As we descended in the cable car, we got a larger and larger view of the ship. As you can see in the picture, the life boat on the starboard side of the ship looked askew. When we returned to the ship, we learned the captain had called an all hands meeting scheduled for shortly after our return.

The captain explained that during the day the crew was engaged in safety training exercises. Part of the exercise is to lower the lifeboats to be sure they are operating correctly. The port lifeboat got stuck in a tilted position. It could not be returned to its normal stowed position, nor could it be lowered all the way to the water. Under those circumstances, it was company and maritime policy that the ship could not operate with a full complement of passengers. This led to rather intense scrambling to provide for an additional day of sightseeing by bus and transportation of the passengers to Bergen by bus a day earlier than expected.

These changes required all sorts of logistical arrangements, including bus rentals, sightseeing arrangements, providing meals during the day away from the ship and accommodating the current passengers in Bergen a day early. Additionally, the company needed to inform the passengers who were expecting to board the ship in Bergen for a reverse cruise back to Oslo that their cruise would not be operating.

The ship’s company — and our tour company, Tauck — did yeoman service in booking all of these new arrangements. Everything came off smoothly. And, luckily, our return flights to Washington operated as planned and we arrived home on time.

— Marvin Singer, a volunteer with Travelers Aid and a member of GT’s Globility Board