Everyone is itching to travel, having been ‘locked up’ long enough.  And as vaccination rates start to rise, and the period before our second one is cut in half, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Of course with Eric’s illness, we had the ‘opportunity’ to blow up our safe family bubble we have enjoyed over the past year, and fly to Ottawa.  So what is air travel like right now? Even though  we had to take 3 flights each way, I can say air travel was, in a word, relaxing!  That may be a surprise but let me explain.

Empty airports – so few people are travelling, so the hustle and bustle of people rushing to catch the next plane is non-existent.   The flight boards are almost bare.  There are hardly any PA announcements. It’s quiet, almost eerie, and I can’t call it enjoyable but it’s certainly less stressful.  

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On-time flights – On our trip to and from Ottawa, we took a total of 6 flights.  Each one of them had an EARLY arrival.  My track record during my event travel days was about 10% on time and 90% late (or at least it seemed that way).  So again a much less stressful experience for flight connections.  

Empty planes – I think the Nanaimo-Vancouver flight was full but the others were less than half-full.  While I feel sorry for Air Canada in a sea of red ink, boarding and leaving the plane was very civilized.  Hustle and bustle on planes was non-existent because there was one coffee service on the long flight so it was very quiet.  There were no business people yacking on the phone on the last minutes before the door closed, or madly typing on mobile phones or laptops to get that last email out.  Very chill and civilized. 

New Planes – with so few planes in service, we had a new 787 from Vancouver to Ottawa and a newish or refurbished AirBus from Montreal to Vancouver.  They were clean and comfortable.  

So overall, although we were not thrilled with the reason we had to travel, I have to say we ‘enjoyed’ our air travel during the pandemic.  It was stress-free; a welcome change to previous business travel years!

On another note, we did say good-bye to Zoe and Eric yesterday.  Eric is recuperating very well and we are all waiting for what the next phase may be once we get pathology and MRI results. We take it day at a time and are just thankful for the progress so far.    

We are glad to be back in our home province. 

We were treated to a wonderful mountain show as we crossed the Rockies.  We knew were were getting close to home!