Over 15,000 flights were cancelled since February 5th, more cancellations than in the days following the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Last week’s weather and cancellations forced the airlines to reschedule a million passengers on later flights. Last week, I was one of those passengers.
On Sunday afternoon as I was traveling from Kansas to Amarillo Texas, my flight from Dallas to Amarillo was cancelled due to freezing fog in Amarillo Texas. I had to spend the night in Dallas and catch an early morning flight on Monday.
My return trip was from Wichita Falls Texas back to Kansas City on Thursday evening. On Thursday, the DFW airport set a new record for snowfall accumulation within a 24 hour period. Despite trying many different options, the weather delayed my return home that day as scheduled and I had to stay overnight for a second time in a week.
The majority of my interaction with the airlines was over the phone and through their web sites. For a while on Thursday the American Airlines web site was not functioning properly. Reaching someone on the phone proved difficult at times. On one call my estimated wait time was 20 minutes. Overall, I’m impressed with the way American handled all of my travel delays during the week. Their automated notification system sends me emails as changes occur.
On Sunday as I was traveling from Kansas City to Amarillo, I received a notification that my flight had been cancelled. Within a few minutes I received a subsequent email with my new flight information.
For my trip from Wichita Falls Texas to Kansas City, my first notification came on Wednesday evening, more than 24 hours in advance as American cancelled my flight from Wichita Falls to Dallas in advance of the storm so the equipment would be in place after the storm passed through. Within minutes I received another email with my new flight arrangements.
On Thursday the storm fulfilled the forecast as snow began falling early in the morning and got heavier throughout the day. I was not surprised when I got the email notifying me my new flight had been cancelled. I called American and learned that my connecting flight from DFW to Kansas City was still scheduled so I decided to drive from Wichita Falls to catch that flight. Just as I was arriving at DFW I received an email notification that my flight had been cancelled.
When your flight is delayed or cancelled by weather, the airlines don’t put you on the next flight out unless there are unsold or unused seats available. You are essentially travelling stand by until you get a seat or until they can schedule you on a flight with an open seat.
On Thursday night, as flights were being cancelled en mass, American Airlines told me the first flight for me to Kansas City would be on Saturday morning. That meant I would need to find overnight accommodations in Dallas for at least two nights.
Finding a hotel room near DFW during a blizzard seemed more difficult than finding a flight out but a friendly customer service rep for Hyatt called around until she found me a place to stay. Once I got check into the hotel, I went online to see if I could find something on Friday instead of waiting until Saturday. I found a seat on a 6am flight Friday morning on Southwest. I booked that flight and then called Hertz to make arrangements to drop my rental car off at a different airport.
The next morning I arrived at Love Field only to learn that the airport ran out of deicing fluid overnight and my morning flight had been cancelled. I was now trying to go standby on two different airlines but at separate airports. In the mean time, American Airlines called and moved me up from a Saturday morning flight to a Friday afternoon flight. So my plan was to try and go standby on two flights with Southwest and if I didn’t get either one of those, I would get a cab and go back over to DFW for the 5 o’clock flight on American.
When they were ready to start clearing standby passengers for the first Southwest flight, my hopes to get on started to slump as they called name after name. I was the next to last standby passenger called. I thought I was going to make it home for lunch.
As I started to board the plane, the scanner wouldn’t accept my boarding pass. I was sent back to the agent where I was told that I had been removed from the flight because a confirmed passenger showed up at the last minute. I was being moved to the standby list for the next flight. As they were rebooking me, word came that there was one center seat left on the plane. I got on the flight after all and made it home by midday.
The airports were filled with frustrated and angry travelers. Tempers were short as they tried to make new arrangements. I was embarrassed for some of the passengers as they lost their tempers and treated the airline personnel rudely. They were trying their best to accommodate the passengers on future flights. The airline employees I witnessed were doing a marvelous job of staying cool as they did their jobs with courtesy and professionalism.
Despite all of my travel difficulties, I was able to meet a few hundred local business people during our workshops in Amarillo and Wichita Falls. It was encouraging to see them brave the weather and cold to attend our meetings. Their enthusiasm for our message of hope and the information in the workshop made all the travel problems well worth the effort.
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