This could have been avoided

[Tozzie]

Yep! I got stuck in Orlando with half the country (at least it felt that way) during the Christmas Blizzard of 2010. I waited in the super long line at MCO, and by the time I got to the front, I smiled and as nicely as I could said "It is just me. I just need to be back by Jan 2 if at all possible. I know my ticket was for JFK, but I can take LGA, EWR. Or if we need to Philly, DC area, or Boston and I can get a train from there. And I know it's weird, but if going through Nashville works, I have family there who I can stay with." She was able to get me into one of the NYC-area airports on Jan. 1 and was super grateful to me for being so flexible and polite. I know just from observing and listening to what was going on that the vast majority of people were NOT being polite OR flexible.

I got stranded in Florida Last year during the Hurricane, when I finally got through to the airline they told me wed, my original flight was Friday so I told her JFK or LGA direct or stops I don't care, me being flexible got me home Sunday instead of Wednesday

 

[Tozzie]

I will admit to being the clueless one, the first DCL cruise I took I went to Florida a few days early and time with my sister and she drove to the port. On my first cruise I got an incredible deal for and MEd cruise the following July and I booked my airline to arrive the day of the cruise, we got delayed at JFK for 3 hours and I was starting to panic. The flight either took a different flight path or something because we landed only 2 hours later than scheduled but I learned a valuable lesson and I now fly in at least 2 days before the cruise. If I had missed the Med cruise I would have had no one to blame but myself do I play it safe now.

I also learned when traveling to Europe to go at least 2 days ahead because the airline does not have that many flights to the destination where as domestically there are more options

 

[cruiser21]

Nope. The airline's #1 responsibility is profits for their shareholders. Certainly your safety factors into that. If the plane crashes, they have to pay for a new plane, pay for lawsuits, etc. Thus, they will maintain their planes to a certain extent. However, they will only worry about your safety to the extent that it is profitable for them.

If safety was the #1 priority, they would have features such as constant tracking of the planes, have newer planes (get rid of old planes), have more seat space to reduce medical issues, security guards on each plane, a medical personnel on each plane, personal parachutes for each person, maybe even a parachute for the plane, more redundant control systems, etc.

Of course all of those features are expensive and eat into profits. Thus, they make a trade off. How much safety, is enough so that they can be profitable?

That's not to say you shouldn't still book a plane flight. The same line of thought is prevalent for almost everything in society. It's a cost/benefit analysis.

Considering how few crashes there are I think flying is pretty safe. I plane does not take off unless the captain says it takes off. They have the ultimate say. They are the first ones to the scene of a crash, and I think most of them don't have a death wish. Medically speaking the fA's are trained in basic life support. There's only so much you can do on a flight. They will do everything they can to land as soon as possible and get that person to a hospital.

 

[maxiesmom]

Nope. The airline's #1 responsibility is profits for their shareholders. Certainly your safety factors into that. If the plane crashes, they have to pay for a new plane, pay for lawsuits, etc. Thus, they will maintain their planes to a certain extent. However, they will only worry about your safety to the extent that it is profitable for them.

If safety was the #1 priority, they would have features such as constant tracking of the planes, have newer planes (get rid of old planes), have more seat space to reduce medical issues, security guards on each plane, a medical personnel on each plane, personal parachutes for each person, maybe even a parachute for the plane, more redundant control systems, etc.

Of course all of those features are expensive and eat into profits. Thus, they make a trade off. How much safety, is enough so that they can be profitable?

That's not to say you shouldn't still book a plane flight. The same line of thought is prevalent for almost everything in society. It's a cost/benefit analysis.

Don't agree.

 

[Dug720]

Literally never thought of that. Augh.



Oh you mean those mean old FAs taking seats away from paying customers?

Regarding the first, I hadn't either. I was taking them at their word that there was heave air traffic in Florida - it was Spring Break for most of the northeast after all. But I know he was there that weekend, and like I said, I had a friend flying from elsewhere along the East Coast flying to FLL and their flight crew told them that he was the reason why. And given that her plane WAS taking a different route than they normally would have, I'm inclined to believe that. And I'm sure that the traffic was really back up from all these flights held on the ground or in the air or a combination. So now I'll be planning EXTRA flying time to Florida for the foreseeable future...

Regarding the second - true...and being paid for the flight, but it then enables another flight to go. But in this case it was the entire crew and they were in middle seats all over the plane. And at least the ones around me had been empty when I checked in. So I will say by putting them in those it avoided the drama of some family that booked late or didn't select their seats or whatever and then they pitch a fit on the plane that "You can't make my 4-year old sit next to strangers!!!!!" until enough people are annoyed they move just to shut the mom and/or dad up. (Just to note - a 4-year old I can understand. I've seen fits pitched over 15 year olds. That I roll my eyes at.)

 

[MPS516]

Was thinking that with 40 people listing their arrival information on the cruise sign in the cruise line would know that a flight with a lot of people was delayed, they would not have to but would think they would check. We did a cruise where 27 people were delayed and departure was delayed 2 1/2 hours waiting for them. Again, not the cruise line's responsibility to do so. My point would be that the airline contract provides transportation from one place to the next, not your entire vacation unless booking through their cruise booking program (offered by Delta). In that case Delta would fly you to the next port, assuming you have proper documents. My personal experience with Delta, but having nearly 2 million frequent flyer miles, is that mechanical within 4 or 5 hours is an apology and maybe a free drink. Same day 500 FF miles onto account, overnight a hotel room and voucher for 1 meal. There have been times if in the airport sand a known 4 or 5 hours delay I have received a meal voucher to use during wait.

I also don't understand why family would fly to Fla and turn around and come right back just because their luggage was on the plane. Plan B, get a room on the beach, or rent a car and drive up to Orlando for the week, fly home from MCO, or since you are security screened on cruise line catch the next ship out of port maybe a shorter different itinerary.

 

[IrishEye]

Sad story. I deal with people every day who believe it is always someone else fault, they never see their own responsibility. A few months ago one of the ships was delayed getting back into port due to a hurricane and these boards were lit up with complaints about missing scheduled travel and how DCL should have gotten them back on time. There is never anything you can do to get through to these people, life happens.

 

[Imahikergirl]

There's a lot of coulda, shoulda, woulda here. I'm a frequent traveler for work, and I've encountered probably the majority of things that can go wrong: flight delays causing missed connections, rerouting to other airports, aborted landings, flight crews not showing up, equipment failure, you name it. And I've learned a lot about how to prepare for problems, the most important lesson being, "plan for problems."

When you buy an airplane ticket, it's governed by the so-called "contract of carriage", which outlines what you're actually getting. You might have a reserved seat on a particular flight with a particular departure time and a particular arrival time, but in truth, the airline is only obliged to get you there. Under certain circumstances, as a passenger you have some additional rights (for instance, if the flight is delayed too long due to mechanical or staffing issues, you may be entitled to meal and/or hotel compensation.) But the contract of carriage contains no assurance that it will get you to your destination on time.

As many others here have noted, the wise course of action is to get trip insurance and/or fly in the day before. I also concur with those who believe they should have had passports, although I don't think that would have helped them in this particular case. For my own travel purposes, I try to avoid any layovers shorter than one hour (longer during the winter) and I just focus on keeping an even keel. As much as we may want to assign blame for what happened, I've found it's far more important to focus on the next move. If your flight into Ft. Lauderdale is horribly delayed, there's no harm in asking the agent about flights to an alternate airport. I once had a situation that required that I be in San Francisco the next day and due to weather, I had missed the last SFO flight of the day (and because it was weather, they weren't paying for a hotel.) They wanted to put me on a flight that would have had me in SFO mid-afternoon the next day. Not ideal. After a bit of cool-headed investigation, they said they had a flight to Los Angeles yet that evening, and could put me on an early morning LAX-SFO flight which would have me where I needed to be by mid-to-late morning. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than the original scenario.

My final point is this: nobody likes delays or cancellations. They're one of the fastest ways to ruin a gate agent's days because they know they have to deal with a LOT of irate customers. It also means they're grateful when customers don't take their frustrations out on them (the agent who set me up with the LAX-SFO connection, which was not one of their usual connections, also thanked me for being understanding: the person in front of me was not.) Gate agents have more power than a lot of customers realize. They can book you on the next available flight and tell you there's nothing more they can do, too bad so sad, but they can also take an extra few minutes and are sometimes able to work miracles. And although they should always do their utmost for everyone, I've found that I get FAR better results when I'm being polite.

My 18 year old had a similar situation. She was flying from Hilton Head (SAV) through Atlanta and Minneapolis to Calgary. There were weather issues in Minneapolis and they were going to keep her overnight in Atlanta and fly her to Minneapolis then onto Calgary in the morning. She had the foresight to ask the desk agent to get her to the West Coast (LAX, SEATAC, Vancouver), when the desk agent started looking at those airports, he realized he could get her to Calgary that day instead. Late, but there. Thinking outside of the box, being flexible and working with the desk agents does wonders at times. Thank goodness she had been flying since she was a toddler.

 

[Vijoge]

Yes I am very confused why they didn't have trip insurance...

She said on her fb page that they didn't want to spend the extra money as they had already paid so much for this vacation.

Only if they had passports, and I bet they didn't do those either. Closed loop southern Caribbean would work with birth certificates.

No, they didn't have passports

And the adults had taken a cruise previously and had flown down the day of embarkation so they thought it would be fine this time, too.

 

[Dug720]

My 18 year old had a similar situation. She was flying from Hilton Head (SAV) through Atlanta and Minneapolis to Calgary. There were weather issues in Minneapolis and they were going to keep her overnight in Atlanta and fly her to Minneapolis then onto Calgary in the morning. She had the foresight to ask the desk agent to get her to the West Coast (LAX, SEATAC, Vancouver), when the desk agent started looking at those airports, he realized he could get her to Calgary that day instead. Late, but there. Thinking outside of the box, being flexible and working with the desk agents does wonders at times. Thank goodness she had been flying since she was a toddler.

Yep. You have to be proactive. This past fall we had a 4-day weekend in NYC schools thanks to Rosh Hashanah (we do again this year - hooray!) and I was flying home to Nashville. I knew that due to weather there had been delays out of LGA all day, but as of getting in my car service car, my flight was a go. On the way to LGA, however, I got the dreaded text.

Cancelled flight.

They had rescheduled me on a flight at 6:30am the next day that would send me to Detroit and get me home around 2pm the next day - about 20 hours later than planned.

I immediately got on the phone and politely explained that was unacceptable and could we look into other options please. I got a great agent who asked me about other area airports and I said JFK would work but not EWR unless it was a much later flight that evening. Told the car service driver to keep going to LGA - I figured if I was there at the airport I might have some other options.

Get there, still on the phone with the agent who was looking at every possibility. There was a huge line at the counter, so I decided to stick with my guy and looked at the departures board. There was an earlier flight to Nashville on the board that should have left, but was delayed and still showed about an hour to go until take-off. I asked about that flight, and at first he mixed it outright because it was closed. I asked if he could check again please as it was showing delayed with it still on the ground and not boarding yet.

A few moments of silence other than typing and then "Where are you now?" Terminal D. I know it is in C - let me check... I turned around and asked the woman directing people to the correct TSA lane - which was miraculously empty - and asked and yep, there was a walkway connector just past security. It can be done... "Ok, go to the kiosk and get your pass." It says I need to see an agent!!! "Hold on. Give me a moment..."

At this point I am ripping off my hoodie and shoes and pulling the things that need to go separate out of my bag.

"Ok, try now."

Boarding pass - FOR AN EXIT ROW!!!! - prints for that flight!!! I was in tears and thanking the phone agent profusely. He said "You're welcome! Now go get on that plane!"

Got through security (having to get a bag of coffee beans scanned extra) and ran down the connector calling my mom and letting her know I am getting there early. She in turn had to call my dad who was at his volunteer gig at the Frist Center to see if he could leave early to get me.

Turns out that flight was slightly more delayed waiting on the crew transferring from an incoming flight, but we made it.

So yeah - there are definitely times you have to be proactive AND polite and advocate for yourself...which sometimes means asking them about options they might not think of. (In this case he thought that flight was not possible, but looking at the board I was able to tell him what the info at LGA was showing.)

 

[marcyleecorgan]

If they didn't have trip insurance OR passports, what would they have done if one of them had gotten seriously injured and needed emergency medical attention? I do believe they need your passport to air-lift you to a hospital... *facepalm*

 

[reimero]

I learned about the necessity of trip insurance the almost-hard way. I consider myself a pretty savvy traveler. The last time my wife and I cruised we had plans to arrive several days before the cruise departed. So, naturally, all our flights were on time, the trip was quite enjoyable and basically everything went as it should. Thursday night before the cruise I fell rather violently ill and ended up going to the ER on Friday (departure was Saturday.) They told me that there was pretty much no way I was going to be getting on the Fantasy the next day. Thankfully, they were able to do a procedure Friday night and get me checked out Saturday morning with clearance to sail. We made it on board after our boarding time, but comfortably before the muster drill.

It was a stark reminder that even when everything goes right travel-wise, the completely unforeseen can still come back and bite you.

 

[cheermom2four]

I also learned when traveling to Europe to go at least 2 days ahead because the airline does not have that many flights to the destination where as domestically there are more options

Exactly why I chose 3 days before AND took out insurance on the flights, hotel pre-cruise, and cruise because I noticed there are definitely not a lot of flights from our connecting airport to BCN (Barcelona)-. They even pushed our connecting flight out 4 hours so we dont arrive till 1:40pm instead of 9:40am (which means we lost a lot of the 1st day we were supposed to be there). Had I not had that buffer, we'd be screwed already and our trip isnt till September. I'm hoping we get there on time but in case, we have the travel insurance (our TA told us to get it especially with so much at stake for a Med cruise). We didnt get it thru DCL though as I wanted insurance that would pay in case of canceling due to situations out of my control.

Our first cruise we flew in the day before as I'm just always paranoid about being on time and too much between here and there that could go wrong.

 

[KalamityJane]

Being polite totally gets you way further. We got delayed due to weather from PDX to MCO with a stop in Vegas. Missed the Vegas-MCO flight. There was a whole plane full of people that were at the desk asking about things, and getting very upset. I stayed polite and they actually paid for a hotel for us in Vegas that night! No one else was getting that, from what I asked because it wasn't the airlines fault.

As to this family - I have an annual trip insurance plan and a specific trip insurance plan because frankly, we have too much going on NOT to have insurance. (month long trip including transatlantic cruise) Also, kids are unpredictable and even if we could have gotten away with only birth certificates, I would have gotten the passports because my luck one of the kids would have broken an arm or something.

 

[Msmit002]

Well, not everyone who books a trip on DCL or to WDW/DLC/Aulani, etc. does the research many of us here do to make a qualified, educated decision based on risk factors. And many of those that do usually don't spring for the passports when not completely necessary or even trip insurance for peace of mind. In this case, I do place the lion's share of the blame on the family for, at the very least, not buying trip insurance. Disney does a pretty decent job of informing you about that product and if you choose to decline, that's on you.

Like many of you here, I also fly in the day before, I get the insurance, we have the passports, because I know that schlock happens and I would rather be able to mitigate the damage than to waste my 15 minutes of fame in this lifetime being the fodder for discussion and having people tsk-tsk-tsk me the whole way.

Look, Disney trips are expensive, No doubt about that. Everyone wants to give their kids (and themselves) this experience. But if you aren't budgeting for insurance and/or passports as part of your trip (and really it's a small amount when you look at the overall cost of cruise passage and flights), this is what can happen. And at this point, I consider these items part of the vacation budget. period.

Bottom line: this family won't make this mistake again - if they decide to try this again and not voice their eternal displeasure for Disney and delta at every turn.

 

[_auroraborealis_]

There are things that have to be considered part of trip cost, like insurance and tips. If you cannot afford them, you cannot afford the trip.

 

[Vijoge]

This entire discussion reminds me of Seinfeld's "Hold the reservation" episode.
I tried to insert the clip here but since I am technologically inept I could not figure it out. It pops right up on google. But selling the ticket is the easy part of the plane reservation...

 

[FigmentSpark]

We got stuck in that Delta international shutdown last August. My son had a newly broken arm and was in a hard splint, NOT his real cast yet. The number of people in the terminal had caused LAX's air conditioning to slow waaaaay down. They were handing out free bottles of Dasani and trying their best. It was rotten. But NOTHING was to be gained by wishing for some pie in the sky world where problems didn't happen.

What worked was DH standing in one line, me standing in another, both of us on the phone, and when I saw a free agent outside of the line I went to her, pointed to my son, explained that we had PAID to upgrade to First so my guy in the shoulder to wrist hard splint wasn't jostled, and on the app 45 minutes before our first class seats had been changed to coach, and please oh please help us. Polite to her etc.

What happened, in the end? Did you get the seats you paid for? How was your son on the flight?

 

[Msmit002]

Classic scene. One of the best from Seinfeld and totally sums up the experience - right down to the intent with the insurance at the end.

 

[KalamityJane]

Read in the comments on FB that the cruise line offered to fly them to the next port of call but the kids did not have passports.
Yes, they were booked through the cruise line.

Also, it was Royal Caribbean.