American Airlines saved the day for a school group of 77 passengers stranded during a major weather event in Dallas.

The high school band from Missoula, Montana performed at Disney World. On the way back they were stranded at DFW airport, and forced to sleep at the airport for one night. And this was the first experience flying – and even leaving their home state – for many of the teens.

“Disney was amazing,” West said. “Half of our kids have never flown before. Some of them have never been out of Montana before, and their eyes were popping out of their head the whole time!”

American Airlines charters flight for a stranded student group from Montana –> https://t.co/wC0aDKPfK4

— NBC DFW (@NBCDFW) February 25, 2022

American didn’t have space to rebook them for several days – splitting up the group so that some would fly back to Montana on Sunday and others would have to wait until Tuesday. The airline wasn’t obligated to provide a hotel, and nearby airport hotels were largely full anyway (and didn’t have room for a group of 77 in any case).

The group complained about how cold it was in the terminal, and the logistics of “feed[ing] 67 teenagers [and 10 chaperones] for five days.” But American set up a dedicated charter for the group to fly home the next day.

According to the airline,

The winter storm has had a significant impact on our operation, especially in Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW). Throughout it all, our team has worked tirelessly to safely care for our customers, including going above and beyond to transport the group of students home after their travel was affected by the storm. We are proud of our team’s extraordinary effort — from our colleagues who coordinated logistics to our crew members and airport teams who took special care of our customers.

Weather didn’t stop there because the charter itself was delayed but the group made it home – and a lot earlier than if they’d had to rely on open seats on scheduled American Airlines service.

One major problem is that it’s difficult to re-accommodate large groups of travelers. Future flights may be booked heavily even during normal periods. During major weather disruptions inventory will be tight with often just a few seats here and there. That’s doubly difficult when the group is students and there are a limited number of chaperones, so the group can’t get split up across numerous different flights. Add in thin routes without many flights to start with and the problem compounds.

This lacks the trolling value of Delta chartering a flight to rescue stranded American Airlines passengers, of course. But kudos to American! They weren’t obligated to do anything for weather-related cancellations.

It sure helps to book tickets using a credit card that offers trip delay coverage, though it’s hard to do so for large groups (your card often won’t cover travelers outside your immediate family and the likelihood that all of these students or their parents have such cards is low, plus you’d have to deal with reimbursements where applicable).

When airport hotels are full, seriously consider going beyond the airport. It’s rarely the case that all hotels within a 30 minute drive are full. And when you’re not returning to the airport in mere hours anyway it can be well worth the drive.