If you're traveling through LAX this holiday, hopefully, you asked Santa for extra patience.
Hundreds of flights have been delayed or canceled because of storm conditions. That's on top of the general snarl that's pretty much normal at LAX.
Is there anything you can do to avoid — or at least minimize — the anxiety and frustration?
For help with that, Take Two's A Martinez spoke with Brian Summers, a reporter for the airline business for the travel publication "Skift."
Summers' tips for busy airline traveling:
1. Sign up for pre-screening.
"One of the best things to do, I've found is to sign up for pre-check, expedited security. Really makes things a lot easier. The cost is $85 for five years. That sounds expensive, but you can just save hours in line and that helps out a lot."
2. Buy a day pass to the airport lounge
"If you're looking for snacks and drinks, it's probably better to go to an airport bar rather than pay $50 to pay to get into a lounge. But there is a major caveat. All of these airlines have customer service areas in the lounge. So what happens is you pay $50 to get in. Yeah, you get mediocre food, but you get access to access to an airline employee a lot faster, either with no line or very little line."
3. If you'll be at LAX for a while, try out the new Tom Bradley International Airport Terminal
"I sort of have good news and bad news. The bad news is if you're flying Southwest or Hawaiian or Jet Blue or Virgin America, those airlines are in terminals where there's not a lot going on and there's not much you can do. The good news is if you're flying United American or Delta, all those terminals are connected and, more importantly, they're connected to the brand new $2 billion Tom Bradley international terminal.
It's a really cool terminal! It gets great natural light. There's a bunch of stores ... Lots of places to eat. There's even a champagne and caviar bar. If you're flying United Delta or American, you can walk to the Bradley terminal within security. It'll take somewhere between five and 20 minutes."
4. If you're trying to get ahold of an airline representative don't call the local number. Reach out to them on Twitter...
"For whatever reason a few years ago when Twitter was a lot hotter than it is right now and more popular, Airlines created these social media teams. So at headquarters they have a lot of people that are monitoring Twitter. If you tweet at them and you say you're having a problem, the airline will likely reach out to you proactively. They'll ask you proactively. They'll ask for your record locator. And someone in headquarters might try to help you a lot faster than they would if you'd called the phone line."
5. Or call an international number.
"There's probably some people out there on the internet that would be upset for me for sharing this on the radio, but airlines have these sort of 1-800 numbers in various countries. United Airlines has people that answer the phone in Singapore. Sometimes there will be a snow storm in Chicago and if you call the regular 800 number, you'll be on hold for hours. but if you call the number in Singapore and there's no monsoon there, they may answer the phone a lot faster. Back in the day, that meant that you'd have to make an international phone call and that would be expensive. But today, with skype, it's not very hard to call an airlines 800 number in Singapore or Australia or Hong Kong."
To hear the full conversation, click the blue player above.