Summer 2022 Travel nightmare thread
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Anonymous
I feel your pain with planning that trip. We had booked in 2020 and the park closed. Rebooked for 2021 a year out right after 2020 trip was canceled. I’m so thankful we took that trip last year but we did have travel nightmares last year too and lost one day off that trip and had to land to refuel the plane, missed connections , no airport shuttle pickup to get to gate etc. All legs of our flights were changed canceled or delayed. Rebook for next year though!! You will love it. |
Anonymous
It is not just abroad. My accountant had his flight canceled 3 times from California. The last time, he and his wife were on the plane and it had mechanical difficulties. Short staffing is really impacting the reliability of airline travel. Add in a storm and all bets are off when you can get rebooked. |
Anonymous
Then they should not have been bailed out during Covid. They seemed okay with government help. |
Anonymous
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These stories have me worried for my trip to Portugal next month! It is with United non-stop going and it's a tight schedule returning (there's a layover in Montreal). We get back to DC 3pm and I will drive 2 hours home that afternoon or SUPER EARLY the next day so that I can go to work. I'll have to mention it in advance that there is a chance my flight could be delayed and will try to not schedule meetings for that day.
I'm also worried about getting covid before/during our trip! We are taking extra steps to be cautious and careful these next few weeks. |
Anonymous
| Family just flew to Italy yesterday and everything was fine. |
Anonymous
| We were going to fly for a long weekend trip and have decided to train or drive because someone will be keeping our kids while we are gone. I’ve been lucky with all my work travel somehow, only minor delays. |
Anonymous
Yes, let’s turn to socialism and let the government run the airlines. Great idea. |
Anonymous
Sometimes I just wonder are posters just so clueless because nothing affected them? https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2022/06/19/why-us-flights-canceled-delayed-sunday/7677552001/ https://www.cbsnews.com/video/flight-cancellations-plague-summer-plans/ https://www.yahoo.com/news/pete-buttigieg-among-thousands-saw-141922184.html https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61862788 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-thousands-flight-cancellations-delays-juneteenth-holiday-weekend-airplane-travel-2022-6 It is a real issue and you need to be prepared. If you have a specific date and time you need to be somewhere, plan ahead. You may need to fly out earlier than you are used to. |
Anonymous
Not that PP- this is all true and I am absolutely preparing for alternate flights, ground options, etc for our summer trip. At the same time, 95% of people will get to where they are going without any substantive issues. Of course you should prepare, but it's also not surprising that most people will have reasonably smooth travel. |
Anonymous
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Last Aug, my family went to Jackson Hole. AA connecting through DFW was cancelled due to a fierce storm. On this, I guess I kinda understand because it was quite the storm. However, the cancellation could have been avoided as they were also short staffed. By the time they were able to get off the ground, the storms hit. They ended up cancelling it due to weather although the reality was they used it as an excuse since as said, it was hours before the storm came that flight was delayed. So then we tried to find flights in and around Jackson to no avail. We ended up taking the first flight on our own dime into Jackson the next AM. We had maybe 4 hours of sleep with our kids travelling as well.
This is the bonus: I could not get the exact refund for the tix because when changing over to the morning flight, AA made a mistake on our tix so their system would not take the difference they needed to refund on seats/flights (we had used AA credit for the trip - actually we took a voucher for seats no less than 4 years ago! It has taken us years to be able to get the credit and thus always fly with AA until we used it up. We will NOT be every flying AA now that we are clear!). On the return flight, the flight was cancelled outright. We ended up finding a place (no easy feat with 50k tourists in Aug there) for the night. We have no idea why cancelled but took the first flight out the following morning. Our trip insurance from Chase covered the hotel rooms but it was just never easy with AA to reschedule. With both cancelled flights, it was a damn mess. Hours in line - as in 2-3 hours at airport and on the phone as well. We were grateful to even get on a plane. We got really lucky as there was a point we considered flying to OKC to drive to Jackson as it was the only place we could find. The only reason we were able to fly to Jackson on our own dime is buying a new ticket outright. So basically, AA was telling us no flights were avail anywhere near JAC except I found online seats avail if we brought new tix. Again, we ate the cost but knew we had credit for the original tix (or at least thought we did!) so it was an even swap. The gist of it was, they don't even tell you straight that it was an option so I'm sure there were people there stuck in DFW for 2 days as was the min before flights out near JAC. |
Anonymous
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PP, they don’t tell you about those tickets because they cost more. Several years ago, my teen daughter was flying home from a summer program alone. United canceled her flight and re-booked a bunch of people that day. When it was her turn, they told her the only flight was the next morning. They booked her on that and there was a connection and it would take over 12 hours so she would get home the next evening. I kept finding tickets online and asking why she couldn’t have those and they couldn’t tell me. The reality is they were more expensive. They finally gave in and got me a slightly earlier flight.
They left her in the airport with nowhere to go by herself. She was too young to check into a hotel. Nice, huh? They said she should just sleep at the airport—by herself at 16. The next morning , she missed her flight (the one with the connection that was going to take like 12 hours). Lo and behold, at the gate behind her was a direct flight to our city. The gate agent switched her. Seriously? There was a direct flight all along and they put her on a long flight with a long connection after telling her to sleep in the airport all night? So ridiculous. The moral of the story is you have to get online and research. Don’t just believe them. Anyway, we worked it out so her program came back and got her (even though it was over and people were headed out). The next morning, she miss |
Anonymous
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Last week I got caught in horrible weather delays. My flight was delayed 5 hours, missed my connection and spent the night at the airport (arrived after 1 and had a 6am flight so it didn’t seem worth leaving). We were stuck on the plane for 45 minutes after landing because no gate agent was available.
Coming home, we boarded close to on time and sat on the plane for 2 hours because no ground crew were available to put the bags on the plane. |
Anonymous
There's something inbetween: rules for proetcting customers |
Anonymous
Agreed. I definitely sympathize with the Op. I had a recent trip that became 8 hours longer because United added a connection stop. No matter that I paid a premium for fewer connection stops-they just canceled a flight a stuck me (and my two little kids) on a crappy flight and it was too late to switch to another airline because it was so close to the departure date and prices for new tickets were sky high. |
Anonymous
I work in the industry. European airlines are way, way worse. |