<p>If a class ends at 6:00 PM, would it be possible to catch a 7:47 PM flight out of Greensboro? No baggage to check.</p>
<p>What if it's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving?</p>
<p>And the student gets on the WFU shuttle.</p>
<p>Driving time from WFU to GSO is about 40 minutes. Is the shuttle on a set schedule? What time is it leaving? Also, there’s a good possibility that class will be canceled. That happened two of D’s 4 years – which was really annoying since we then couldn’t change her flight to an earlier one. Her freshman year, though, it was her fault – she didn’t read ahead on the syllabus where it said her lab was canceled on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. The reality is that a fair number of kids just take the entire week off.</p>
<p>Well, Son’s class meets 3:00 - 6:00 pm on Tuesdays. No other day. Yesterday was the first class and he says the teacher already told them he’s not canceling the class before Thanksgiving. 
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<p>So, if the WFU website is accurate, a shuttle would leave Benson at 6:00. I’d make him quit class early in order to catch the shuttle. But the question remains whether a 6:00 shuttle is early enough. 
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<p>DougBetsy,
I ran into this problem last year with my son. Since it was the first time he would be doing this I opted to put him on a flight that left the day before Thanksgiving. I was afraid that the shuttle would be late, there would be traffic, etc. And the reality is, if he was to miss the Tuesday evening flight, chances were good that he would be spending Thanksgiving in Winston-Salem. Can’t tell you if I made the right call, other than to tell you that he had no trouble with the shuttle and the flight that Wednesday morning (although I did worry that he would sleep through his alarm). He flew home 3 times his freshman year and one of the times( I think it was December) the shuttle was late arriving. Not terribly late but late enough that if you were crunched for time to begin with, it could pose a problem. My advice is to spare yourself the worry and put your son on a flight first thing on Wednesday. I have flown in and out of GSO several times and it has been my experience that the earlier you leave there the better. You won’t run into problems with the plane not being there as the first flights of the day tend to have the plane parked there overnight (this is normally the case with the flights to LaGuardia in NYC). Twice now, I had a flight out of GSO later in the afternoon and both times the flight ran into “equipment problems” (USAir) and both flights were delayed by about 3 hours. This recently happened to me again a few weeks ago and I spoke with a gate agent who told me that the afternoon flights are more often than not, delayed. The delay is usually caused by airtraffic in and out of the east coast cities (NY, Philly, DC) and this just puts their whole flight schedule behind.<br>
Another option for you may be to fly out of Charlotte. Not sure where your son is flying to but Wake does have a shuttle that goes to Charlotte over the holidays. I looked into this because the flights out of Charlotte are much better than GSO (more flights, bigger planes). The shuttle books up however, and is more expensive but it may be worth it in your case. Often kids can get rides to the airports but I think that Charlotte is a tougher find as it is about a 90 minute drive from Wake. But maybe you can put your son on a later flight from Charlotte, take the shuttle and he won’t have to worry about his class.</p>
<p>I would say he would make it if he was all ready to go, got out exactly on time, and had a friend waiting for him outside the building his class is in with his stuff already in the car. I don’t know about the reliability of the shuttles; I’ve always been driven to the airport. </p>
<p>Having such a narrow time slot scares me a bit, though. Can he get out of going to that one class?</p>
<p>We used a transportation service called ABC Door 2 Door Transportation. We drove our Freshman to Wake and left his car and flew home. I was not sure where the Freshman parking was when I called ABC but the man knew exactly where it was. We were met in the parking lot and driven to the airport. Cost for BOTH husband and I was $49. They could pick up your son right outside his classroom or dorm room.</p>