Our Southwest return flight from MCO to Buffalo - Cancelled!

[migel]

Yes, we were one of many unlucky travellers yesterday (Sat). Southwest's only option was to suggest we get a hotel by the airport for 2 nights, then fly back Monday. Not an option. Ended up renting a car, one way, MCO to BUF, and driving through the night, we were home by noon Sunday. Yikes, lots of unhappy people at MCO yesterday.

 

[jba2]

That's horrible. Why was your flight canceled.

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

What a stinky way to end a vacation . Glad to hear you made it home safely.

 

[migel]

That's horrible. Why was your flight canceled.

Apparently a minor technical glitch at Washington Air Traffic Control caused hundreds of flight delays and cancellations on the Eastern Sea board. Sounds like a major over reaction, but there it is. A real eye opener though. We had options when we got the news, none of them convenient, but others around us were in tears and desperate. I guess a bad storm can do the same thing though. Still, Disney was a blast, as always. Cheers!

 

[darwinsrule]

It was on the news last night. Massive outage, last I heard something like 800 flights affected. Basically there was a big empty space around Washington D.C.. Going to take them days to get caught up.

 

[starvenger]

Sounds bad. Glad you got back safe. I've experienced cancellations a few times (most recently last month coming back from Maui) but usually a situation where flying is the only option or it was the start of a trip for work.

 

[darwinsrule]

Sounds bad. Glad you got back safe. I've experienced cancellations a few times (most recently last month coming back from Maui) but usually a situation where flying is the only option or it was the start of a trip for work.

And how is being stuck in Maui longer a bad thing?

 

[starvenger]

And how is being stuck in Maui longer a bad thing?

I think my scenario would be the only one I can think of. Pilot saw some issues during preflight for a 10:30 flight and sent request to cancel (he was keeping us updated) but the airline did not confirm cancellation until around 1am.

Gate agents were hustling to get hotels and taxis and food credits but apparently at that time of night Maui almost completely shuts down. There's one hotel near the airport - a Courtyard - but whatever reason they sent families with kids over to the resort hotels in Kanaapali which is on the other side of the island and 45 minutes away. We ended up checking in and getting to bed around 4am. Meanwhile I was working on rebooking the flight, but instead of a 2-leg flight through LAX (which I wasn't looking forward to anyway, because it's LAX) we ended up going OGG-SFO-IAH-YYZ, starting with a 3pm flight.

And naturally one of our luggage pieces got mistagged and never got out of Maui. It got delivered to us 2 days later.

Upshot of everything was that we never really got to enjoy that "extra day".

 

[darwinsrule]

That bites. If you are going to be stuck somewhere Maui is probably the ideal situation. BC (before children) DW and I almost ended up being stuck in Denver on the way to Vegas. Ongoing joke for years has been that "Denver is a lovely place". Sure it is, not when you have a $400 a night hotel reservation waiting for you. We almost didn't make it to Miami in March for our cruise on the Wonder when Jetblue canceled our connection from JFK to FLL. Full panic mode set in as we were rebooking things at the counter in BUF.

 

[garytam]

We were on the other end trying to fly out of BUF to MCO via BWI on Sat. We boarded the plane then send back to the gate to wait for the cancellation.
The choice was to fly down Monday ( all flights are booked on Sunday) or drive couple hours to Akron for the flight Sunday morning.

Going back is another day delayed since we don't want to return to Akron 11:00pm then 5 hrs drive back to GTA. Wish I had booked the direct flight from BUF.