slo’s WEDNESDAY 1/17 poll - Cancelled Flight(s) ✈️

[slo]

As some know….I live in the Chicagoland area, so we use Midway Airport or O'Hare Airport. We‘ve had super cold temps here and many flights have been cancelled. My boss is one of the people affected by this. He’s in Florida and had multiple flights cancelled since his original flight on Monday. He’s finally fed up and is renting a car and driving home. I won’t bore you with his tale of travel woes, but all I’ll say is these cancellations have cost him a lot of money with additional hotel stays, additional car rental, additional food, now gas to drive home, additional parking time for his car sitting at the lot at Midway, canceling patients Tuesday & Wednesday and paying me to sit at the office with no patients coming in. We hear about flights being cancelled all the time, but we don’t realize how negatively it affects someone until you know someone it happened to. Can you relate to my bosses story?

Have you had a flight(s) cancelled?
If yes….were you able to easily get another flight?
or
Did it negatively affect you like my boss?
(multiple choice)


For Me…..I’ve had one flight cancelled and it was 2004 when we were in WDW. There was a hurricane approaching and we already changed our flight to leave MCO at 5:00pm. At 10:00pm the night before we saw on the news (no texting then) that MCO was closing at 5:00pm . We jumped out of bed quietly scrambling and closing ourselves in the bathroom to discuss (our 6yr old & 13 month old were sleeping). To make a long story short - my DH got a 7:00am flight out of Tampa. We threw everything in suitcases, a cast member picked us up in a golf cart (we were at The Poly), picked up our girls out of bed and crib (they flew in their pajamas), got in the car and got to Tampa in time and thank God that flight didn’t get cancelled. It was very stressful. Luckily, that’s my only experience with a cancelled flight.

 

[WDWEPCOT]

Hurricane Charlie got my flight canceled it’s supposed to fly out Friday the 13th so we flew out Saturday the 14th got halfway to Florida to find out the airport was closed so we’re sitting in Alabama and there’s an empty plane at the gate 3/4 of the plane that landed in Alabama rebooked for Monday I’m like nope I run a car and drive to Florida but remember there’s an empty plane sitting at the gate lucky for us about 10 families held out they found a pilot and we flew into Tampa and they let us use our cell phones as the plane was taxing down the runway to takeoff so we could change our rentals over to Tampa for pick up so we could drive over to DISNEY !! Everybody thought I was crazy to go to DISNEY after they got hit by a hurricane I said DISNEY will be fine everybody else not so much but you won’t even be able to tell DISNEY that there was a hurricane I was correct
I had a flight delayed for 7 1/2 hours in Europe that caused me considerable problems with hotels and rental cars and DISNEY because I was headed back to DISNEY lucky for me I made the airline pay for all that they have different rules in Europe much much better than they do in the United States when issues like that come up

 

[Kitty 34]

We had our last leg from Dallas to Lawton OK cancelled for a thunderstorm. We were flying American airlines. They never even told us. We were all waiting and suddenly the Lawton sign turn to some place in Florida. The personnel told us the next flight out was the next day in the evening. Long story short, our DS drove the 3 hours to Dallas from Altus, OK to pick us up. Crossing the Red River that night into OK was in the worst thunderstorm I have ever experienced in my life!!!

.......all to see our very first grandchild.

 

[#1hoosierfan]

I don’t fly very much. Just for vacation, so once a year or so. Never had a flight cancelled. Lots of delays, though.

 

[Schneewittchen37]

My family had two cancelled flights in 2022 with Southwest that led to some crazy drives.

In November 2022 my family had a planned trip to Orlando around Veterans Day. There was a hurricane that damaged MCO and our flight was cancelled just about 4 hours before we were set to take off. I think we had a 6 pm flight. DH didn't want to cancel, so when the kids got home from school, we loaded the luggage in our big old pickup and started driving south. Trip saved. Had a great time.

We used the points from the cancellation to book a flight to visit my parents in Alabama for Christmas. Our flight was the day Southwest started melting down for Christmas 2022. Our flight was delayed, but we made it to Panama City FL and picked up our rental car and drove to my parents place in Alabama. Southwest continued to meltdown during our visit and they cancelled our flight 24 hours before we were set to leave. DH acted fast and booked another rental car from an Enterprise in Panama City for the drive home. The Enterprise was almost in chaos with other people doing the same thing as us. They ran out of cars, so let us do a new contract and keep the airport rental. The staff were busily moving cars from the airport to the city location to keep up with demand. We had an exhausting long drive home.

 

[sarahann77]

June '22 our stop from Chicago to home was canceled. The first leg got in at 7am. The whole flight then went standby for the rest of the day. We got to see one entitled steward on the way which allowed someone a lot of credit to allow the seat since the steward did not or couldn't use the jump seat for whatever reason. They finally added another flight about 8pm so we were there the whole day. Learned the airport a bit since each flight was in a new area.

 

[jimmymc]

The only canceled flight I've ever had was the second leg of Atlanta to Philadelphia via Cleveland. I got off the plane in Cleveland to several texts from my dad saying how my flight was canceled. Luckily since he was picking me up and in NJ, I got on a flight to Newark 2 hours later.

 

[bobbiwoz]

We have never driven instead of waiting and flying. So, I guess we haven’t had it THAT BAD!

 

[ronandannette]

I can’t remember having a flight cancelled on us personally, but Christmas week of 2022 was disasterous for weather all across Canada, with thousands of flight disruptions. It resulted in us having an unexpected guest for the holidays after she became stranded. Major scramble to change all kinds of plans AND she brought in Covid. We all tested positive by New Years.

 

[tvguy]

I had one flight in Hawaii from Honolulu to Molokaʻi continuing on to Lanai that after we took off, they announced since neither airport had lights, and we left late, that they could not make it to both before dark. They were checking with their operations center to learn which destination would be dropped. Then the plane would return to Honolulu and everyone who did not make it to their destination would be put up in a hotel, get meal vouchers and be put on the first flight out the next day. I was a part of a College Group that were going to be camping on the beach and scuba diving for a week on Lanai. There were 20 of us, and we were the only ones going to Lanai. There were about three times as many people going to Molokaʻi so seemed like a shoe in that we would the ones getting a free night in Honolulu in a hotel, not sleeping on the beach since we were the smaller group. Wrong. Apparently the airline had a contract with the U.S. Post Office to deliver mail to Lanai and the penalty for not delivering the mail would have been more than the cost of putting 60 people up in hotels for the night. Oh well.

 

[Moliphino]

I don't think I've ever had a flight cancelled. I've had delays that have messed up travel (one 10 hour delay that left me sleeping on the floor of the ATL airport was super not fun), but nothing outright cancelled.

 

[soccerdad72]

2 times when I had to drive at least part of my route to get home.

Years ago, business trip coming home from Tokyo through O’Hare, when we landed, all regional flights (for like every Midwest state) was canceled due to thunderstorms. I had a wedding I needed to be at the next day, so instead of getting a flight the next morning, I rented a car to drive home to Cleveland. Made it as far as somewhere in Indiana and had to pull over to get a hotel for a couple hours. Jet lag had set in. Got up early the next morning and drove the rest of the way back to the airport to drop off the rental and pick up my car. Made it to the wedding

Last Christmas (2022), we were coming home from Costa Rica on Dec 23rd during the ice / wind storm that covered half the country. Got as far as Houston and got notice that our connection had gotten canceled. We had already switched over to a Columbus flight because the Cleveland one was canceled before we even left Costa Rica, so we moved on to plan c (or d ). Ended up getting a flight to Pittsburgh and renting a car there. Total trip time (from when we got picked up in our hotel at Costa Rica): 23 hours. Made it home around 1am Christmas Eve morning.

 

[SueInBoston]

probably a handful of times, but since we are empty nesters with no urgency of must be home by certain time, we usually just book additional hotel stay until there's a flight. We are both remote worker so we just work from wherever. The longest overstay was probably Vegas in 2022, we had a Sat red eye that was cancelled, but there was no direct back to Boston until Tuesday.

 

[TiggerTrigger]

We've had some really close calls and some awful delays, but I think only three canceled flights. One wasn't too bad, but the other two were not fun.

1. The not so bad - About 10 years ago, I was flying from Houston to Syracuse with a layover in Chicago. It was early May, so I was optimistic about the weather in Chicago and Syracuse. I can't recall what the weather issue was (I think it was late season snow), but my Chicago connection was delayed and then canceled. I was working the app (with little luck) while waiting in the long line for in-person service. They managed to reroute me through Cleveland. I was shocked that even my luggage even made it.

2. The bad - I was living in FL and getting ready to fly up for my freshman year in college. We had just moved to Florida and had a bunch of my stuff at my grandmother's in NJ as sort of a storage plan, so we were flying FL to NJ and then driving to Syracuse in our rental van. I had a lot of new stuff that was packed in our luggage. We flew out of Orlando for that trip up and were delayed and eventually canceled because of strong storms all along the eastern seaboard. They rebooked us onto a much later flight, but our luggage never made it to Newark. I was an emotional wreck but thankfully, my parents built in a couple of regrouping days in NJ before driving up to NY. I think our bags were in North Carolina. A delivery truck showed up at my grandmother's about 2 days later with all of our stuff. I think there was one bag that was separated from the rest that arrived on day 3, just before we drove up to NY.

3. The awful - My husband and I had flown up to NJ for a family visit and were flying out of Newark back to Houston. Some bad storms rolled through the NY metro area that eventually led to the cancellation of our flight. I think we were on US Air for this one. They couldn't get us on anything else that day and my boss was completely inflexible with me missing work the next day. So, we started trying to see which airlines could get us close to home that evening. American had a late evening flight into Dallas that hadn't been canceled. So, we got our luggage back from US Air, rebooked on this American flight to Dallas, landed around 11:30pm, got our bags, rented a car in Dallas, drove the nearly 4 hours between DFW and IAH, DH dropped me off at my vehicle in long-term parking so I could follow him to drop off the rental, and then made the 45-50 minute drive in our own vehicle back to our house at the time. It was about 5:30am when we got home. I was completely worthless, but I made it to work on time that morning.

 

[disneychrista]

I don’t really fly all that often. Of the 8 flights, over 3 trips, twice the flights were significantly delayed. My first flight ever was delayed several hours, which made us miss our connecting flight. The next time, the flight back from a work trip was delayed a few hours. No connection that time.

 

[sam_gordon]

My most recent cancellation was the worst. Supposed to fly out of Medford, Oregon at 5:45A. When I woke up at 3:30, I had a notification on my phone that my flight was cancelled, and I was moved to a 2:30P(?) flight. I know airlines have the capability to "fix" things, even after notifying passengers, so I still went to the airport at 4:30A. Of course, the cancellation was "true". I was able to get on an 11:30A flight through Seattle.

My original schedule was supposed to put me landing at my home airport at 5p that same day. The 11:30A flight got delayed, I couldn't make the connecting flight I needed to, so spent 8 hours in the Seattle airport. Ended up getting home about Noon the following day.

 

[Lord Manhammer]

Maybe I’m lucky, but I’ve never had a domestic cancellation. Europe is a different story. I’ve been stuck in Lisbon, Pisa and Zurich due to cancellations. I’ve been ON a train when they announced a strike in France and had to stop early in Marseille and rent a car. I try not to get too upset about those because I’d rather be canceled in Europe than on time in the USA.

 

[GAN]

It's hard to complain about a cancellation due to weather -airlines have a lot of lives they're responsible for. As someone once put it to me before a balloon ride... "We'd rather have you down here wishing you were up there, than having you up there wishing you were down here!" Now, cancellations by airlines to suit their needs ...that gets me upset. They do it all too frequently now ...book a flight that they have every reason to believe won't fill, then dump you on another flight later in the day with less than 12-hours notice. They have your money -the only option you're left with is to take what they give you or book with another airline and get a voucher for the original flight. Big scam....

 

[Dan Murphy]

Our return flight home from Hawaii, back in late 70's. United pilots went on strike. Flights canceled. We had to get a room in a hotel somewhat near the airport. When we went into the room, there were bugs, roaches, or what looked like roaches. Marie and I got our bags and left. We went back to the airport. Next day, we did get a flight, standby, piloted by management. We still talk about it today.

 

[CGB]

We've been lucky that most of our impacted flights were just delays and not cancels. I did have a cancelled flight out of San Francisco once. I was able to reschedule on a later flight and just waited at the terminal. Due to a rather large hissy fit thrown by another waiting passenger, I was upgraded unexpectedly to first class. I can't say that cancellation impacted me negatively.