Business humor keynote speaker and comedian Jan McInnis is back to traveling, and she has posted the following article of her little know travel tips . . .

Little Known Travel Tips

Smoking has been banned on flights since 1990, according to Google. So why did someone smoke on my in-coming plane last month causing the flight to be cancelled? Because, in my opinion, there are people flying and not paying attention to the rules - which affects all of us travelers. The smoke was so bad that not only did they cancel the flight, but they had to take a row of seats out of the plane, and put huge tubes in the plane blowing the smoke out of it. . . it was a mess. I made it home at 1 a.m.

Now that travel is coming back, we're going to run into more and more nutty situations that will disrupt our travel. As a keynote speaker and comedian, I travel for a living, and in the first month of going back to the friendly skies, I racked up $200 in apology credits from the airlines because of people and their stupid mistakes. It's not the airline's fault – it's the travelers.

Forget the worn out travel tips advising you to get to the airport 2 hours early, here's the travel tips you REALLY need to know.

1. At the gate, sit near the gate agent checking people in, NOT near the boarding door. If you have a ticket, you WILL get on the plane. But if there's an issue with the flight, you want to be the first person in line for the gate agent to re-book PLUS you'll hear the scoop first. On that smoking flight, I overheard the agent and the pilots talking about the issue. I knew there was a problem afoot, and I was second in line when they finally canceled the flight.

2. Don't mess with your rental car once it's booked. They use ANY excuse to bump up the price. I knew this from past travels, but I still made this mistake when I got an email from Hertz asking me to add my flight information to my upcoming rental. I did that, and they doubled my car price!!! The phone rep told me to bring my original paperwork to the rental counter and they'll honor my former price, which they did. But ya know the whole reason I was putting in my airline info was to SKIP the rental counter.

3. Get the app WhatsApp on your phone. It's the most universal app that works while you're in the air. If you're having travel issues, and there's no internet (which several of my flights have NOT had), you can be in touch with someone and work on them seamlessly via this great app.

4. Don't pre-pay your rental car. If you get to that family reunion and realize staying away from the relatives for 18 months wasn't so bad, you're stuck. Pre-paid rental cars don't give you money back for dropping off early and they won't let you extend your rental.  

5. And finally - you have 24 hours after booking your flight to cancel it. I'm pretty sure it's a law. The airline might try to strong arm you into keep it or just modifying it, but you are allowed a full refund within 24 hours of booking. But I hope after reading this article you don't cancel . . . travel is still fun, and it's great to be back out in the world!!

About Jan McInnis

Jan McInnis is a keynote speaker, comedy writer, comedian who has spoken throughout the country to groups in health care to education, finance, and more. She's also written for the 'Jay Leno's Tonight show' monologue, syndicated cartoon strips, TV, radio, and even guests on the 'Jerry Springer show.'