Flight Canceled at the Last Minute? Do These 4 Things Immediately

You’ve most likely heard all about the second-biggest news story from this past weekend: the CrowdStrike outage. I was one of the many airline travelers affected by the resulting delays and cancellations, and let me tell you, it was hectic.

Now that I’m a few days removed and comfortably back home, I’ve been reflecting on the process and feeling relatively good about how things ended up. I thought I’d share my experience and explain four steps that helped me handle the whole thing, in case you ever find yourself stranded due to a flight cancellation.

1. Stay calm

If you ever experience a major travel disruption, remember that it’s not just happening to you. There’s at least a planeload of other people in the exact same situation (or even 5,500 planeloads; as of Tuesday, Delta alone has canceled that many flights since Friday morning). All those people are probably feeling the exact same emotions as you. And there’s likely only a handful of airline employees on hand to help sort through the issue for everyone.

Yes, it’s frustrating, and yes, you deserve better when you’ve paid a company hundreds of dollars out of your vacation budget to get you from point A to B. But getting upset or angry won’t get you to your destination any faster. It’s largely out of your hands, so take a breath and get to problem-solving.

2. Know your traveler’s rights

In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued new regulations for airlines that say what customers are owed in the event of a major delay or cancellation. For instance, passengers are owed a prompt cash refund rather than credit or vouchers when a flight is significantly delayed or canceled. Individual airlines will also have their own policies regarding food vouchers or hotel and transportation assistance in these situations.

If you’re in the middle of a cancellation, hopefully the airline is already making announcements or contacting you with this information, but do some research on your own as well. Knowing what is due to you in this situation can help you feel less frazzled. If you know the airline will be putting you up in a hotel for the night, you don’t have to scramble looking for a room on your own.

3. Research alternatives, and be flexible if you can

My husband and I were stranded at an airport that was a 2.5-hour drive away from where we’d been vacationing, so it wasn’t an option to turn back around and spend the night with our family. And because there were so many flights being delayed and canceled around the country, the gate agents were letting customers know that some available rebookings weren’t going to be for another two or three days.

As you can imagine, that wasn’t going to work for us. While my husband waited in line to speak to an agent about rebooking, I searched on my phone for alternative flights. I found one on another airline the next day that would put us in a city close enough to home that we could take a charter bus for the final leg.

When it was our turn to speak to the agent, we were able to suggest that option rather than have them search for a flight into our home airport. By having that information ready, we were able to snag two seats on our desired flight right away — and the airline would be covering any price difference or fees, so there was no extra hit to our credit cards.

Yes, it meant we had to get a hotel near the airport for the night, but at that point, we knew departing that night was out of the question. If we’d been entirely reliant on the airline to rebook us, or insisted on being flown into our home airport as planned, we could have been waiting around for another few days.

4. Keep your receipts

Ideally, the airline will provide you with food vouchers for a major delay or cancellation and assist with getting you a hotel room, but it’s not always a guarantee. We weren’t offered any food vouchers this time (I’m guessing because the system was so messed up due to the outage, the automated food vouchers we’ve received in the past weren’t being sent out).

And the gate agents were announcing that there was only one hotel in the area that they had a partnership with, and it was running out of rooms.

Rather than depend on the airline, we hustled out of the airport as soon as we had our new flight confirmation. I called the nearest airport hotel that looked respectable and confirmed a room reservation before we even left the terminal.

The airline we were flying has a policy about reimbursing passengers in these extreme situations for hotel, transportation, and meal expenses. We made sure to keep all of the receipts for the food we bought during the extra 24 hours of travel, as well as for the hotel stay and bus fare. We’ve already submitted the form and now just have to wait for the reimbursement to come through.

The joys and pains of travel

I had a fantastic week with my family before our mini odyssey home. To me, travel will always be worth it; I just have to remind myself that it won’t always be a smooth journey. But being prepared and keeping a level head can go a long way to getting you home.

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