If you’re an anxious traveler or last traveled by air long ago. I want to help take the stress out of your travel day with these 15 tiny, itty-bitty little travel tips that could make a massive difference in your overall experience. Let’s go.
01. Book A Morning Flight
Our first teeny tiny travel tip is to book a morning flight, and the earlier in the morning that you can do it, the better. Because morning flights rarely get canceled or delayed, and if they do get canceled or delayed, you have the rest of the day to get rebooked on another flight to get you to your destination that day.
I like taking morning flights anyway because I love getting to where I’m going as soon as possible. I don’t mind getting up super early because I can always sleep on the plane.
02. Book A Direct Flight
Our next tiny travel tip is still dealing with booking your flight, which is securing a direct getaway. Now, I fly a lot out of Raleigh Durham, and unfortunately, there are not a lot of places that Raleigh flies to directly. But if you live near a large airport like Atlanta or Chicago or even in Portland or other places, bigger Cities like Dallas Houston.
If you can book a direct flight, that’s what you should do. Because again, if you only have one flight you have to take to get to where you’re going and it gets delayed or canceled, there are many more options to get you on another flight to get where you’re going.
Also, it means you only have to deal with the possibility of a delay or cancellation of one flight instead of two or three flights. So, try to book a direct flight if possible to take the stress out of the day.
03. Travel Insurance
Number three, something else that is super easy to do and takes little time is getting yourself some travel insurance. This will give you so much peace of mind while you are traveling. Even if you never have to use it because, as we all know, with all insurance that you purchase for yourself, the idea is that you don’t ever want actually to have to use it.
But if you have travel insurance when traveling, it helps take a lot of the stress out of anything going wrong.
04. Airline App
Fourth tip: download your airline app . If your airline app is downloaded to your phone, you’ll know as soon as something is going wrong with your flight and be able to address it faster than many other people can.
Plus, I like having the app to have my boarding passes in there to be able to look up the information on the airport that I’m going to.
So I can see where my next Gate’s going to be. There’s so much information at your fingertips when you have your airline app on your phone for your travel.
05. Pack Accordingly
Next, decide early on in your process of planning. If you’re going to check a bag or do carry-on-only packing, make sure that you pack accordingly. Because there are some things that you can only pack in a checked bag, and some things need to go in your carry-on bag if you need to check a bag.
Mainly, I’m talking about lithium batteries that cannot go in a checked bag. They can’t go in the belly of the airplane because they are a fire hazard. But make sure that when you are planning your trip, you know whether you are checking a bag or doing carry-on only. That will save you a lot of headaches later on.
I know that when I go to Japan, even though I take a carry-on suitcase size. I’m actually going to be checking that suitcase. So I will be packing that bag knowing that I am checking that bag and I don’t have to worry about following the carry-on rules. Still, I’ll know to avoid packing any lithium batteries in that bag and anything else that’s not supposed to go into check.
06. Know Your Airline
Now, talking about suitcases is a big one many people get caught unaware of to make sure you know what your airline line bag size and weight restrictions are. Because they are changing constantly, there is no consistency across the board for all airlines. So you want to make sure that if you are going to do a carry-on bag, you know the dimensions of that carry-on bag that is allowed for the airplane or airline that you are flying on.
You also need to know the weight restrictions for that bag. Some airlines weigh those carry-on bags, and they are pretty strict about the weight restrictions, so make sure you know that information. But you should go to the airline’s website that you are flying and ensure you know those numbers for yourself.
You don’t want to arrive at the airport and have a bag that you want to check in, and the waitress restriction is 40 pounds, not 50 pounds, and now you’ve got to get rid of 10 pounds of stuff or pay an extra 75 dollars. Because yeah, that’s happened before. It’s not fun and definitely stressful, so knowing that information will alleviate a lot of stress for you.
07. Track Your Suitcase
Whether you are checking a bag or planning on doing carry-on, put a tracker in your suitcase. You never know when your carry-on suitcase will be checked, as I’ve mentioned before. So make sure you have something in your suitcase to be able to track it just in case it does get lost.
The Apple Air tags are great, and the tile trackers are great. Just make sure you choose a Tracker that can be tracked even if it’s a thousand miles away. Because you know, that’s what was happening last year, and you want to make sure that you can find that tracker on your phone when you need to.
Also, as a side note here, please take a picture of your suitcase before it gets checked because you might need to be able to identify your bag. But we’re talking about ways to relieve your stress, and we’re not going to think about the bad things that can happen. We’re thinking about the things that you can do to prevent extra stress in case things go south.
08. Download Entertainment
Now, all of that stuff is things that you can do way before your travel day to help make your travel day less stressful. As we get closer to your travel day, like two or three days before your trip, you want to download the entertainment you will enjoy, like ebooks, movies, or YouTube videos you want to watch.
So you’re not trying to do it when you are walking out the door or, God forbid, at the airport with their lousy Wi-Fi.
09. Check In Online
Number nine is one that I do every time I fly, and that is to check in online as soon as you are able. Twenty-four hours before you’re playing into parts, and if you have already downloaded your Airlines app, you can do it through it, making it super easy.
This allows you to look and see if there may be better seats that you want to choose for your flight and to make sure that you are all confirmed for your flight. If you decide to check a bag, it also gives you the opportunity to pay for that before you get to the airport. So that is taken care of ahead of time.
10. Portable Charger
Make sure to fully charge your portable charger before arriving at the airport. There are a limited number of plugs in most airports, and these days, you want to be cautious about what you’re plugging into an airport plug anyway.
I know you can’t hack into a portable charger. It does not give you any information, but to be safe, bring your charging station with you so that you can charge up your items if you need to.
And with all the delays and cancellations that happen during this High Travel season, having your portable charger already charged up so that you can use it throughout the day is going to be a major stress reliever, especially when you might want to listen to your meditation app to calm yourself down.
11. Pack Snacks
I don’t know about you, but I tend to do a lot of stress eating when I get stressed. And you know travel is stressful. Even for those of us who travel a lot, travel days can be really stressful. That is why you should pack snacks for the airport and the airplane, and yes, you are allowed to bring food through the TSA line.
Just make sure you put it in your liquids bag if it’s anything liquid or liquid-like. Like peanut butter hummus or yogurt, all those things need to be in your liquids bag, but pretty much anything else, they don’t care what kind of food you’re bringing through the TSA line.
So whatever snacks you want to bring with you again, if you end up hitting some of those delays or cancellations, you don’t want to be looking around that airport and looking at buying a 10-dollar bag of nuts when you could have brought nuts from your house. So pack your snacks, which will help alleviate some stress; if not, at least you’ll have something to snack on for your stress eating.
12. Packing For TSA
One of the more stressful parts of the airport is getting through that security line. So pack your bags to get through TSA quickly. Ensure you have your liquids bag easily accessible if they want you to pull it out and your computer close to being able to pull it out if you need to.
I have TSA pre-check, so I don’t typically have to do those things, but what? I still pack my items like I have to pull those things out anyway. Because you never know when they will change those rules, and you will have to pull those items out.
Hopefully, we are moving towards not having to deal with our liquid bags anymore or pulling anything out of our item bags. Because they are putting new scanner technology into most airports, hopefully, in a few years, we won’t have to deal with this much longer.
But for now, you want to ensure that you’ve packed your personal item bag or carry-on or both so that it can get through TSA quickly and easily.
13. Carry-On Luggage
As I alluded to earlier, you want to pack your carry-on bag, not your item but your carry-on suitcase, for the potential of having it checked at the gate. This includes having a Tracker to make sure if you have any medication in there, you’ve removed the medication and put it in your item bag, and there are no lithium batteries in that suitcase.
So, have that ready to go, just in case because I usually have to have a connecting flight. I don’t mind if they check my carry-on at the gate, and I always have my bag Pat so that it can be checked. That way, I don’t have to deal with my suitcase in another airport and get on to another flight, and then I can pick it up when I get to my destination.
Now, if I’m going somewhere that I want to get out of the airport quickly at the end of my travel day, I will keep it with me as much as possible. But you know, I’m usually letting them check my bag at the gate eight times out of ten because now I’ve got a checked bag for free.
14. Printed Documents
This next tiny travel tip might seem simple, but you would be shocked. At the number of people who forget to do this, it is to double check, triple check, and four times check that you have your ID and passport with you. I also want to ensure you have a printed copy of your itinerary, including the address of your accommodations and any other documentation you might need. It would be best to be prepared if your phone runs out of battery and you can’t pull up the images or get onto the cloud to find that information.
I know a woman who was traveling once. Who did not have anything printed out; she had saved it all on her phone. So she had photos of her itinerary and her address and everything. But she arrived at her destination and needed a taxi to get to her accommodations; I think it was an Airbnb, and she didn’t have the address. She had no idea where to go; her phone was completely dead, and her portable charger was also wholly finished.
So make sure you have printed coffees with you, and that way, you’re covered if the worst-case scenario happens and you run out of your phone battery because it can be challenging to pull anything up on your phone if you don’t have any juice.
15. Gate
You need to know where your gate is and ensure everything has stayed the same. That’s the first thing you must do once you get through security. I can’t tell you how many times my date has been changed from when I checked in for my flight to when I actually arrived at the airport to go on my flight.
So you want to ensure you’re at the right gate, and if you’re away from the right gate, you need to find what gate you need to be in. Everything is fine once you’ve found your entrance and there have been no changes. Then, you want to set an alarm for 10 to 15 minutes before boarding. Set an alarm on your phone. Then you can grab some coffee, use the bathroom, have a snack, and take this opportunity to use that meditation app to Center yourself before your flight.
Conclusion
Lastly, don’t pre-schedule any activity days for the day you arrive. Just take that time to unwind and get used to being in a new place. You can walk around the city a bit or schedule things you want to do for the rest of the week if you don’t already have an itinerary. If you are going somewhere, that will be a time change, and you need to get used to that time change. Make sure you’re getting out and getting sunlight in your eyes if it’s during the daylight.
Make sure you are staying up until a decent bedtime there so that you can quickly transition over to their time and not be jet-lagged for three or four days. Because that’s not any fun either, but mainly take a deep breath and enjoy being on your vacation.
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