There’s a meme with a great deal of truth, that passengers have to walk to their gate to find that it exists before going off to get food.
People are concerned about leaving their gate, and so they often sit there rather than buying anything to eat or take with them on the flight. That’s why OTG first started installing iPads at gates, and why several airport concessions companies offer at-gate delivery. That generates more sales.
Passengers generally don’t have confidence in their travels. I didn’t when I was a kid! When I would fly cross country on my own when I was in junior high, especially if I was connecting, I remember going up to the gate agent and showing them my boarding pass just to confirm what I sort of already knew, that I was in the right place and that I had what I needed to fly?
This concern really resonated with me: someone flying American Airlines who didn’t “feel confident leaving the airport for a hotel” during an overnight delay. If the airline didn’t give them a hotel, they weren’t comfortable leaving the airport for one.
I don’t even feel confident leaving the airport for a hotel but WOW @AmericanAir this is how you treat your Advantage customers? pic.twitter.com/xkHufSSVLB
— Vaidehi Gajjar (@vgajjar95) January 10, 2024
I was already rebooked and that was not my complaint to begin with. Are you all comfortable with leaving your Advantage customers stranded at an airport overnight?
— Vaidehi Gajjar (@vgajjar95) January 10, 2024
There are some important things to think through before finding yourself in the position of having a flight cancelled and getting stuck somewhere for the night.
- While airlines will generally provide a hotel for you if they cancel a flight for a controllable reason (mechanical, lack of available crew) they won’t provide a hotel if it’s because of weather or air traffic control.
- You probably don’t want the hotel they’re going to provide for you anyway. Their obligation is to offer a hotel, not to offer one that you’re going to find sufficiently clean and comfortable. (I do happen to think there ought to be some minimum standards, but even where there are the sourcing of rooms is generally delegated to a third party – that wins the contract based on cost.)
- And you aren’t going to want to stand in line to get a voucher and to be told where to go. Often that can take an hour, losing precious sleep, and given the time to get to the hotel and back and perhaps for an early morning onward flight that hour may be crucial.
- So it’s better to source your own room if you’re in a position to do so, perhaps aided by the possibility of reimbursement through a credit card’s trip delay benefit.
In fact you may want to proactively call it a day on your travels rather than waiting for the airline to do it for you! If things are looking grim, with rolling delays, you’ll be far happier in a hotel and having a proper dinner followed by rest than you will be sitting at the airport until the airline finally cancels your flight at 1 a.m.
What this means is making the decision on your own to call it a day on your trip adn get rescheduled. Calling it a day earlier also may mean access to more inventory to get a seat the next day – you’re booking into that space before everyone else on your flight is trying to do so!
That often requires interacting with the airline, when phone lines are clogged and self-service tools may not let you reschedule. But also better to deal with those queues at 7 p.m. than midnight!
Remember that you have a number of different avenues to get customer service assistance in rebooking: telephone; gate; check-in desks; club lounge (if eligible); customer service counter; chat/messaging and more. So see what has the shortest queue and is most helpful, and if you don’t get the assistance you want and answer you want the first time go see someone else that might.
Delta is having tremendous issues with their FF accounts. I am a 2Million Miler Platinum and have not been able to access Skymiles for over 9 days. Finally, thru text message I learned they are “changing over accounts” but no one notified me or my wife, also a Platinum.
Delta is messed up with this. Please look into it.
Airport waiting rooms have become gross , both in terms of uncleanliness and fellow passengers .
Traveling in airplanes has become gross , both in terms of fellow passengers and uncleanliness .
Airline and airport staff have become gross , particularly in terms of unhelpfulness and rudeness .
Hotels and restaurants are just a small step higher , and significantly more expensive than worth .
I am pessimistic .
Correct me if I’m wrong but most airline websites make you choose before checking out if you want protection for your trip or not.
If you click that button to decline and you didn’t book with a credit card that provides such protection, you kinda put yourself in the position of possibly sleeping at the airport. No one to blame but yourself.
Flew JFK-DFW and was supposed to fly on to BHM but got stranded at DFW with mechanical issues late at night.
We were given both meal (barely covered a cup of airport coffee) and hotel (I’ll refrain from sharing that horror show) vouchers.
The guy in front of us had flown in from JFK the day before but AA said he wasn’t eligible for either voucher since he had overnighted in Dallas, therefore he wasn’t a transiting passenger.
Just an FYI
Airlines seem use chaos theory to tie every delay and cancellation to weather.
Agree with Alan. Something is up with delta.
We suddenly got emails out of the blue confirming that we canceled our flights. (We didn’t).
We look into the app, and 2 round trip domestic first and 2 round trip international business trips are gone. (E others were still there)
Called Delta in January 8. : the flights were canceled on January 9. 1 day in the FUTURE
Took 2 hours to sort out
Since then , I’m unable to book any flight using my $2600 flight credit.
I cannot stress this enough. Please screen shot your TICKET NUMBER and not just your confirmation code. The agents can only see the current state of your itinerary with a confirmation code. They kept telling us we never fully booked the tickets. (We did). Only by saying we had tickets and showing the TICKET NUMBER. did this escalate correctly and reverse their future cancellation and get us back into First class.
Heavy..
The insurance is worthless. Plus airline will say its weather even when it is mechanical ( twice done to me)
The lounges are closing at 10p, so they sre worthless too.
Under a 1000 miles i am driving, until there is a full scale revolt of passengers demanding better across the board airlines will continue to get worse. FF miles now basically worthless too.
@Coolah Not sure what your experience has been with travel protections but I’ve had to use it several times over the years and I’ve yet to have it fail me.
CSR/Amex insurance and Trip protections are good for covering the cost but they don’t rebook flights or find you a room. For that you need to be pro-active as Gary suggests. Get on the phone as soon as the cancellation or delay is announced (usually in the app before the gate), and reach out by twitter or United app messaging. Use the channel that responds first. And tell them what you want. I personally won’t take an offer to reschedule to a redeye or a 6am flight – take the morning flight or maybe a connection or maybe even a taxi to an alternative airport if there is space on the flight. Most times the airline will accommodate the request if it is reasonable.