Delta today is an example of why not to fly in the day of

[CathyCU03]

On our way home from a cruise last year air traffic control went down in the DC area and all the airlines flying between Philly and Richmond were heavily impacted. We ended up having to spend 2 extra nights in Orlando, which was way better than my parents who go rerouted and then stuck in Chicago for a night. I was glad it was at the end of our cruise not the beginning.

 

[jerseygal]

On our way home from a cruise last year air traffic control went down in the DC area and all the airlines flying between Philly and Richmond were heavily impacted. We ended up having to spend 2 extra nights in Orlando, which was way better than my parents who go rerouted and then stuck in Chicago for a night. I was glad it was at the end of our cruise not the beginning.

Flight delays, happen g too often! So, the cost of the hotel was your responsibility or did you have trip insurance?

 

[CathyCU03]

We had trip insurance but only for our cruise not for our flights. Because the delay did not impact our cruise the insurance did not cover any of our extra expenses. For our cruise this year we have insurance for the cruise and our flights!

 

[Luvmypetz]

You actually don't have to fly in three days in advance. Just fly in the afternoon or evening before and pay for one night's hotel. If your ship leaves on a Sunday, fly in on Saturday and you wouldn't miss work. If it leaves on a Saturday, fly out Friday afternoon and only miss half a day, but at least you wouldn't risk anything happening the day of.

This wouldn't have worked for us last year. Not a cruise per se but still flying. East coast, specifically Baltimore, had an ice storm. All flights into BWI cancelled. As soon as we got notice, we called. Forever on hold. This was on Sunday. The first flight with 2 seats available was Wednesday. So we rented a car and drove home from New Orleans.

 

[Stacy's a freak]

I definitely would plan travel a day in advance just to make sure there is time to find lost luggage if there is any. I would never think that people could be delayed for days ... until this debacle. Yay, one more thing for my anxious mind to worry about when it comes to travel - haha.

 

[BuzzLightyearInTampa]

I was stuck in this nightmare. My flight from Dayton, Ohio was scheduled at 5:30 AM, with an arrival time in Tampa (where we live) of 9:57 AM after a change in Atlanta. We actually arrived in Tampa just after 7:00 PM, 9 hours later than scheduled. And my bag did not arrive until the next day. Needless to say, if we were flying down the morning of the cruise, we would have been sunk.

 

[disneyholic family]

So glad you confessed that.
I'm actually not that forceful in real life, but as dh stood in line not moving for 45 min at LAX on Monday then a roving CS person started answering questions for people who went up to her, I went up to her.

Dh was still in line 10 minutes before boarding, having moved maybe 5 feet from when he got in line over an hour before (I have timestamped texts and pictures from the line lol), but we got our proper (paid-for first class upgrade despite the app suddenly putting us in Main Cabin...we had originally been in Comfort Plus!) seats and we got onboard solely because I put on my "ya gotta do what ya gotta do" hat.

As DH stood in that line he found out that no one else was having issues with THAT flight. They were waiting to talk about the next flight from the gate OR were "making sure" that the seats shown in their printed boarding passes were still their seats.

The people monopolized the ONE agent for literally 45 minutes were dealing with a long cancelled flight to not-Seattle NOR the next flight at the gate, trying to get their baggage. 45 min, as our flight got closer and closer and people with no seat assignments waited to let the gate know they were there (not sure why we had no assignments but that was the case), dealing with something that had no urgency because they had hours for their flight.

Sometimes you have to jump the line because other people are in line for no good reason. They could help you, they could help us...so it was good that we did that. Hurrah.

Oh and we saw two women being rushed up to security at lax while we were coming in the airport. So they still do rush people when they can!

good for you!!!
but by the way, the customer agents should have called out by flight.....to find out if there was anyone in line with a flight that was about to leave...
the agents should prioritize the people in line...though they rarely do that...
we shouldn't have to be the ones to do that....though thank god, both of us had the guts to do it..
i remember why in that case i ran to the front...
i was flying with my daughter to her audition at WDW...(that's why DH and DS weren't with us, i was just going along with her to keep her company)...
so we were anxious to get there that day...
not that her audition was that day, but every missed flight increases the chances of not getting there in time..

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[BuzzLightyearInTampa]

Generally agree, although this is the kind of vacation that come hades or high water, you need to make the time to get there with an emergency cushion. If it were just a typical beach vacation, then yeah, stuff happens, no big deal.

100% agree. If you're going to the beach or WDW and the same thing happens that happened to me (scheduled arrival in Tampa: 9:57 AM, actual arrival: 7:00 PM with no luggage) your vacation gets started a day late. For a cruise, you miss the ship and even if you do make it, imagine sailing with only your carryon and the clothes on your back. Add this to the fact that most people plan their cruises for a year or more and pay thousands of dollars. But if you cruise a lot and it's just another cruise to you, then your perspective may be different than a "once in a lifetime" or maybe once every two years or every five years vacation that a cruise is to many people.

 

[olookasquirrel]

Even Regal Entertainment Group has a massive, 18-wheeler-sized generator in their parking lot to keep their server farm going when the power goes out. It used to kick on every Friday morning and run for a while as a weekly test.

We had one of those too. Tested every Friday after we all left. Except - no one thought about refilling it with gas, because we never needed it! Lab was right on the CT coast, and we found out there was no more gas about 3 hours into Hurricane Irene's 4 day power outage. Well, we didn't find out then, we found out 2 days later, followed by a frantic search because NO ONE had generator fuel at the time. Eventually tens of thousands of dollars worth of enzymes had to be trashed! Fortunately our project at the time was to generate a temperature stable enzyme, so it got a nice test .

 

[olookasquirrel]

I definitely would plan travel a day in advance just to make sure there is time to find lost luggage if there is any. I would never think that people could be delayed for days ... until this debacle. Yay, one more thing for my anxious mind to worry about when it comes to travel - haha.

Yes - I prefer at least a 24 hour cushion so a) I can drive there in an emergency and b) if my luggage is lost, I have a chance to recover it OR get to the store and replace the necessities. This is also why I never pack a suitcase for me and a suitcase for my husband - 2 cases with mixed clothes in each. That way, if one is lost, we both have SOMETHING. (that or I'm super unorganized, but let's pretend it's just for safety).

 

[AquaDame]

The reason outages affect airlines more obviously than other businesses is because of the redundancies. Airline's won't operate without redundancies in place, which means if something goes out and the systems are taken to backup, that is considered a complete outage. An outage may only take down part of a system, but for safety reasons an airline isn't going to fly planes that they can't track, or dispatch a flight without an accurate copy of the manifest. It's easy to say that a few redundancies would fix the problem, but it's really not that simple (and lets be clear, two system failures does not a crisis make, even if they're close together). A small IT company really can't be compared to a global network of mobile systems that sends those systems 30,000 feet into the air, often over oceans, with hundreds of souls onboard.

Ask yourself this: do you really want to get on an airplane if the airline says, "Eh, that's close enough. We have most of the information". Answer: you don't.



Always nice to hear after I just worked 3 hours past the end of my shift to make sure that passengers got to their destinations after a cancellation.

A backup that loses functionality (can't track planes, no correct copy of the manifest) isn't really a functional backup in their case. The point is minimizing downtime, and it sounds like you had to deal with the fallout of the fault in the system, which I am sorry you had to do! I am certain you did everything possible to get everyone on their way so thank you!

According to fuller reports like the one posted above they DID have a full emergency backup system in place that would have been sufficient but critical systems didn't switch over to the backup. Which makes them moot and really could happen to anyone, big or small. They make it seem like the "few redundancies"would have fixed the problem had it switched correctly but I admit I'm not in the industry - my husband only engineers the planes, not the flight plans!

I admit no one would die if our systems went down, but we are a global company and I can guarantee every person in America has seen our work. SmallER than Delta is all I was saying.

 

[Shanti]

I never buy travel insurance. My insurance is paying extra to fly in two days ahead of time and going to Disneyworld.

Travel insurance also covers overseas medical. Most regular health insurance policies don't cover overseas health emergencies, or the need to be airlifted from a ship or island during a health emergency. That's even more important a reason to buy travel insurance than wanting to cover the cost of your trip. Plus, someone might get ill or injured right before the trip, requiring a last-minute cancellation.