What 'Planes, Trains & Automobiles' Teaches Us About Holiday Biz Travel

Did you have a bad travel day during the Thanksgiving holiday? Chances are it wasn’t as bad as the one Steve Martin endures in the 1987 classic “Planes, Trains & Automobiles.” Martin plays uptight marketing exec Neal Page, whose attempts to get home to Chicago for the holiday after a business trip to New York are met with a series of unfortunate events — the worst of which is being saddled with annoying shower curtain ring salesman Del Griffith (played by the late John Candy).

Yes, this movie is hilarious. And almost 30 years after its release, it’s still the benchmark against which all business travel nightmares are measured (“Had to sleep in the airport after your flight was canceled? Well at least you didn’t have to share a hotel bed with John Candy”).

But at the end of the day, “Planes, Trains & Automobiles” is a story of two business travelers who did some things right but many things wrong. With mobile phones, travel apps and other technology that weren’t available to biz travelers in the late-1980s, we’re now able to avoid many of the pitfalls Neal and Del encounter in the movie. However, their disastrous journey home does provide lots of still-relevant lessons (the first of which is that the human male anatomy should feel quite different from two pillows).

So as we prepare for the upcoming holiday travel season following the dress rehearsal that was Thanksgiving, let’s take a look at 10 things we can learn about biz travel from “Planes, Trains & Automobiles.”