Guest Blog: No Wine Needed at Your Final Destination

Today we'd like the feature the 2nd guest blog of it's kind. A few weeks ago we put out an invitation for our Facebook fans and Twitter followers to author a guest blog post. An avid & active fan and follower, Mandy Arnold wrote the following customer testimonial post about her recent experience of flying from another airport in our region. Mandy is a local midstate resident with a plethora of travel experience and passion for her local community, marketing and more.

As a pretty loyal HIA user for the past six years, it wasn’t until recently when I did not fly HIA that I realized how much I really appreciated it. My time entails a pretty decent amount of planes, trains, and automobiles mixed in with a ridiculous amount of meetings across seven states. Navigating this kind of schedule means that every minute of my day counts. I stupidly lost sight of this concept when I decided not to fly HIA on a trip to the Mid-West. Well, it didn’t take much more than my super early wake up alarm at 4:30AM, which was a necessity in order to have any chance of making a 9AM flight in Baltimore. That’s right. A 9AM flight required that I leave my house at 5AM. As I sipped my coffee in an effort to awaken my senses, I kept thinking, “What am I doing not flying HIA? I could be in bed right now. I mean, who gets up this early? Not me.”

So, I continued in my zombie state, still hitting traffic on my way into Baltimore which thickened at even 6:00 in the morning, only to arrive at BWI at 7:15AM. I was again reminded of my temporary lapse in judgment when selecting an airport as I had to park nowhere near the check-in. Lugging my gear, which included my laptop, oversized purse and suitcase, I clumsily made my way to a bus station that seemed to be miles away. I’m sure it wasn’t, but after sitting in traffic and being sleep deprived, I was not in my best form.

This trip continued in a downward spiral of inconveniences that amounted to more money spent, more time required and a not-so-happy Mandy coming home three days later. My trip came to a grand finale in true non-HIA fashion when I landed late and had to drive home from BWI in rush-hour traffic after a long week. Let’s just say the wine was uncorked and awaiting my arrival.

Why am I telling you all this? I’ve learned that the best way to travel is to not make the same mistakes I see the guy ahead of me making. For instance, don’t get behind anyone who doesn’t already have their shoes untied or their computer bag already unzipped by the time they hand their ID to the last checkpoint before choosing their preferred security line. Think through what you are really getting into when you fly and what kind of experience you really want.
Learn from my appreciation of HIA’s ridiculously close parking, in-and-out processes, and security staff that could only be nicer if they handed me cookies and coffee after completing the security scan. It doesn’t get much better than this.

So, whenever someone asks me what airport to fly through, I always say fly HIA. You’ll save time and your stress level will be about half of that if you flew elsewhere. No wine needed at your final destination.