Hello IECs,

The below email is being sent to host families who have a student scheduled to arrive to them this weekend. As a reminder, if you need to reach someone on the Travel Support team, please use the contact information below. Facebook cannot be reliably monitored on busy travel days.

Thank you,

Your Travel Support team

Hello!

We hope you are excited for your student’s arrival. While it is our hope there will be no travel disruptions this weekend, we want to let you know there is a high likelihood based on the current weather forecast for the east coast. Given this forecast, we have scheduled additional staff for our phone lines and added staff at airports to assist our students. We appreciate your patience should you need to reach out to our teams as call volumes will likely be high.

Here are some helpful things for you to know so you are prepared as well:

• Airlines continue to experience excessively high demand. This means when there are flight disruptions, they have less availability to rebook passengers. This summer we have seen many passengers rebooked on flights two days later than their original itinerary.

• If a student is unable to fly out of the New York area on Saturday, our team will take them back to campus until their rescheduled flight.

• To assist with rebooking students, our team may reach out to see if there are other airports you are able to pick your student up from. This is especially true if your selected airport is small. Flexibility in arrival airport could mean the difference between your student arriving on time, or with only a slight delay.

• Airlines have the most access to seats for rebooking. If your student has a flight cancellation and they reach out to you, please tell them to get in line to be rebooked by the airline at the airport. Lines will be long, but this is the best course of action as the agents at the airport have more access even than call center representatives.

• If a student’s flight is cancelled, we will still take them to the airport on Saturday. Our staff will work to help them get rebooked by the airline at the airport, but they need to be present at the desk in case a seat becomes available so they can get on the plane!

• Want to follow along with your student’s flights? We recommend Flightaware.com or Flightradar24.com in addition to your student’s airline website.

Travel days can be long and frustrating. No one wants a delay or cancelation, but we hope this information will be helpful if your student encounters an issue. Have questions or need assistance?



• Call us at: 800-634-8351
• Email us at: [email protected]
• Text us at: 617-746-1711 (for emergencies after hours please call)

Thank you for opening your home and community to exchange. We appreciate you and wish you a wonderful year.

EF Exchange Year Travel Support