Marketgoers scramble for alternate ways home
By Gary James -- Furniture Today, September 17, 2001
HIGH POINT — HIGH POINT — With airports throughout the nation closed for more than two days last week, furniture manufacturers, retailers and sales representatives scrambled for alternate ways home from premarket here.
Car and van rentals were the transportation of choice, and many agencies dropped their normal surcharge on one-way drop offs to make it easier on travelers.
After a flurry of activity on Tuesday — the day of the terrorist attacks —lines were thin at the airport's car rental and airline counters on Wednesday, when premarket typically begins to wind down. But phone traffic remained busy as travelers sought to work out trip logistics. Rental car agencies at the airport still had some vehicles available as of midday Wednesday, mostly compacts and economy models.
Irwin Morgenstern, a sales representative for Kinder-Harris, Hekman and Woodmark, had hoped to fly back to Philadelphia on Tuesday morning at 11:20 a.m. He was on his way to the Piedmont Triad International Airport when the first plane hit the World Trade Center tower in New York; he was in the airport when the second plane struck.
After all airports were closed down, it looked "highly unlikely that I'd be able to fly home anytime soon, so I started calling the rental car agencies," he said.
Worried that there wouldn't be any cars available, Morgenstern decided to call one agency after another from "A" to "Z" but found a vehicle with his first call to Avis. "I feel very lucky," said Morgenstern, who spent Tuesday night with a friend in the area. He estimated his drive home would take about eight hours.
Industry sales rep Ernie Rockhill found himself without a flight home on Wednesday morning. He had been due to fly back to Coral Springs, Fla., from Raleigh, N.C., at 9 a.m. Several flight cancellations later, he and two other colleagues opted to drive home in their rented compact car.
"It's a good thing we didn't bring golf clubs," Rockhill said. "We're not going to have an inch to spare once we get our luggage in."
For Robert Cribbs, director of sales and marketing at Kimball Home, and other attendees at the cancelled SoHo Today conference here, the hope remained that flights would be back on track by their scheduled return date of Friday afternoon. But if flights were cancelled, Cribbs said he was prepared to drive his rental car home to Jasper, Ind.
"Even if they charge a drop-off penalty, it will be worth it to get home," said Cribbs.
At the Radisson Hotel in High Point, many visitors who had hoped to fly out on Tuesday returned to the facility that afternoon seeking another night's stay. Normally, the hotel might have been challenged to find additional rooms, but because of cancellations from Tuesday's inbound premarketers, everyone was accommodated, said Clif Taylor, general manager. The hotel also extended checkout times "because of the uncertain flight situation."
"A lot of folks rented cars," he added. "We know of one group that was going to drive all the way back to Seattle."
Amtrak also was an option. Dave Heard, vice president of sales for Aspen Furniture, made a train reservation soon after all the airports were closed down but opted to cancel it when it looked like planes might travel by mid-week. He ended up booking a flight back to Arizona through Cincinnati, "braced for lots of delays," he said.
