Mom and Me Adventure – Mom’s First International Flight

My mom had never flown internationally before and was really nervous about the whole immigration and customs process. Heck, I forced her to (finally) get her first passport for this adventure. There was no way I could just meet her in a connecting airport either with her lack of texting skills; so I had her fly down to Austin for a few days prior to our departure so we could fly to Vancouver together.

When I book early morning flights, I think to myself – this is great, get out early, reduce the chances of delays, get to our destination before midnight. But the actual morning of getting up at 4:30 a.m. sucks like a vacuum cleaner. Stay up late until the sun rises, yes absolutely I can do that and never once whine about being tired. But getting up… ohhh, I am not jovial when I have to get up early.

To make matters worse, there was apparently an unannounced exodus from Austin the day we left because the airport was packed! There was a 20-minute traffic jam just to drop people off. But this girl is a pro traveler and the second I saw all of those red brake lights snaking their way from the terminal, I told the hubster to quickly move into the pick-up lanes instead. It was a ghost town on the bottom level and I was mentally patting myself on the back about how smart I was until we got to the ticketing level. Holy moly, I have NEVER seen it that crowded before – not after the Formula One races, not after ACL, not even after SXSW ended. I have no idea where the hell all of these people came from but they all apparently needed to be standing in the bag drop off line for Delta Airlines – an airline that I do not have any type of status on…

So I joined the end of the queue of 100,000 people and tried to think of ways I could calm my mom after we missed our cruise because we would still be standing in that line two days later. But then the guy in front of me turned around and said, “if you still have 45 minutes before your flight takes off and already paid your checked bag fee, you might have luck using the curbside valet guy outside”. Wait, what? Those guys still exist? I rarely check a bag anymore and honestly thought that service went the way of dinosaurs, the dodo birds, and comfortable economy seats with legroom. Thank you random-dude-in-line-who-missed-your-flight because you just saved my morning! I dragged my suitcase to the door, saw there were 3 people in that line and hightailed it over there dragging my mom behind me. Six minutes later, bags were checked and I was coaching my mom on how to go through the TSA Pre-Check line with me.

Success! Soon enough we were boarding our flight to LAX for the first leg of the trip. I booked my mom an aisle seat so she could get up whenever she needed. The guy in the middle seat did not manspread. And I sat by my window seat so I could sightsee while tearing through a book (Bird Box – what an f’ed up book that was, so glad I didn’t read that one right before bed). The best part was my mom could chatter to the man in the middle seat without distracting me from my book. I can’t think of a more perfect scenario.

Los Angeles had lovely June Gloom in full effect and I had to reassure my mom that it wasn’t smoke from wildfires about to burn down the terminal (I honestly don’t know how she jumps to the most disaster-laden conclusions). Unfortunately, our plane went into Terminal 2 in LAX which might have been a cool design when 737s and A320s weren’t packed to the rafters with passengers; but now when every plane is full, Terminal 2 becomes horribly overcrowded. We had about 3 hours for connecting time because my mom doesn’t move that fast anymore and I figured it would be a smart idea to build in a buffer in case the first flight was running late. Of course when I plan that way, everything runs flawlessly. Even though our connecting flight also left out of Terminal 2, I made my mom jump on the bus to take us to Terminal 3, where I had access to the Virgin Atlantic lounge. While not fully set up for Priority Pass members like it is for the Upper Class passengers flying later in the day, my mom was able to get a bagel and as much coffee as she could drink. Although I did have to explain at first that I wasn’t being charged for each cup of coffee she drank, which was cute.

After hanging out in the lounge for about an hour or so, we made our way back to the miserably crowded Terminal 2 to wait for our WestJet flight up to Vancouver. After my Air Canada debacle last summer, I was curious to try WestJet. I figured as long as it got us to Vancouver the same day, it had to be better than Air Canada right? Well, the flight was not only on time, but we landed in Vancouver slightly early. And while the service wasn’t quite like Emirates, it was really good by the standards of North American airlines economy. I now understand why the Immigrations guy in the Montreal Airport told me to try WestJet instead of Air Canada.

It had been about 20 years since I was last in Vancouver and while there is a lot of construction going on at the airport, I was delighted that the walk to Immigration and Customs still featured the First Nations artwork. I swear, I’ve made that long trek in sterile, windowless corridors in many airports and Vancouver has the nicest arrival experience of any airport I’ve ever been to. My mom and I spent some time taking pictures and letting the crowd die down before making out way to the kiosks to do the entry process. My mom was sad that she didn’t get a stamp in her new passport even though the automated process is way quicker. We grabbed our suitcases, gave the immigration receipt to the customs guy, and before my mom knew it, we were officially in Canada.

Although my mom was nervous about her first time navigating immigration and customs, Canada was probably the best first country for her to experience the process. And the Vancouver Airport definitely set the bar really high. I’m pretty sure I could never subject her to the entry process back into the U.S. at Dulles or Miami after this!