RDUWanderer

My coworker was supposed to return DCA-RDU this evening, but the flight was cancelled. AA (actually, Eagle) has rebooked her on a Sunday flight. She is displeased. (And doesn't have status, FWIW.)

The trains are sold out.

She now has a one-way (refundable) ticket on WN Saturday evening out of BWI.

I've recommended looking for a one-way car rental, and my assumption is that off-airport places are more promising than on-airport.

Are there any other options?

TIA.

swag

You've tried plane, train, car. I guess option 4 would be Greyhound.

duchy

Shuttle operator ?
May be quite a lot of demand in this weekend's situation

GoBears

Bwi? Iad?

River in Sight

Amtrak's Carolinian has seats available for tomorrow's 10:55AM departure from Washington Union Station.. $93 and 5h47m from Washington, or $78 and 5h30m from Alexandria. If she's near the airport, not only is Alexandria the cheaper option, but it's probably closer as well.

RDUWanderer

BWI is WN, and we have that covered for tomorrow evening. 7ish.

IAD is UA Express. There's ONE seat available on a flight at around 10 p.m. Everything else is full according to seatcounter. No improvement over WN, and that's assuming that she could get the UA seat.

I checked Greyhound. The price is right ($51), but travel time is over 9 hours on the bus that goes overnight. (Redeye on a bus...gak.)

Shuttle service. It's 280 miles; I'm not aware of any shuttle options.

Thanks everyone.

nomore1k

PHL is a two hour train ride. The PHL airport has a train direct from 30th St. Station. WN has flights with seats PHL-RDU starting at 1PM tomorrow. She could be in RDU by 2:20pm

RDUWanderer

Thanks. She told me it was sold out, but when I checked, there was availability. Looks like the way to go.

(AA has a DCA-DFW-RDU routing, arriving in RDU at 1 a.m. Maybe not, although I'm sure some of the mileage sluts amongst us [points at self ] might consider it. Be sure to NOT request ORC.)

But the winner for sheer obscurity has to be the train/plane PHL routing proposed by by nomore1k. ^

nomore1k

I lived in Philly for 3 years in the mid 90s. I considered EWR, PHL, BWI and DCA all home airports (especially in a situation like this) since they are all easily accessible from the NorthEast corridor. JFK and LGA aren't even that bad from Penn Station.

But the Carolinian is a good option. I would just check that the train makes it in tonight given the weather. Amtrak, particularly south of DC, can get pretty messed up by weather too. The Northbound Carolinian today turns and becomes the southbound tomorrow.

Szar

If it seems like the rental companies are sold out, one out-of-the-box option is to call Enterprise at RDU and the non-airport branches and see if any of their cars are marooned up in the DC area.

Enterprise locations have their own cars-- it's not a shared national or regional pool. So if one's been dropped off in DC, it may be sitting on a back lot waiting for its owner-office to send someone up there to bring it home.

If you're standing there at the gate watching flights get cancelled and there are a lot of obvious Triangle people groaning, another option is just to grab about 4 friendly looking people who have their luggage and suggest that you all could see if a minivan taxi would take you home. It's ~7 x the distance to BWI, but most of it out of traffic. Five people paying the driver ~$125 each would let the driver have a decent fare rate, a nice tip for helping out and driving in the ice and snow, dinner at the Chop House rather than at Wendy's, and a night at one of the hotels near RDU.

sechs

I think that the problem with a cab is that he's going to want return fare. And with so many folks stranded, a decent rate may be hard to find....

RDUWanderer

Thanks to everyone for the ideas.

My coworker did end up taking the Carolinian, which was running late and had toilet issues. But she did get home.

Incidentally, the "massive blizzard" was some chilly rain in VA and NC, so the weather was pretty much a non-issue. (Except, of course, that the original Eagle plane didn't make it to DCA, probably because it was stuck at LGA.)

hhoope01

Yeah, the weather was kind of a non-issue here in DC. Only a very little rain on Friday night. Unforunately, our Saturday morning flight from DCA to DFW was cancelled. Assuming no more cancellations/delays, the best we could do for 4 seats is today's 5:10pm flight.

But at least I found out about the flight cancellation before getting up early on Saturday morning (of course AA never did send me my flight change notice like they were supposed to do.) I found out only because I checked the flight and noticed it was cancelled and then called.

On the bright side, we got to extend our DC vacation for 2 extra days.