Rescheduling Flights During Major Storms
I definitely got off easy with the recent events of Hurricane Sandy, but even knowing that I was safe couldn’t take away my almost irrational levels of stress from not knowing when I’d be able to get back and what I’d be coming back to. Below is my mini-saga and mental notes I made throughout the process for future use.
I’d already planned a weekend visit to parents in Florida, and no sooner had I arrived Friday evening than travel advisories were being issued for the hurricane. I debated changing my Monday morning flight fee-free to the last flight out on Sunday night, but at that point no one was sure when the storm would hit and Sunday night might have been when it actually hit. And if I left any earlier, my overly expensive tickets really wouldn’t have been worth it.
Mental Note: When travel advisories are issued, make up your mind quickly about whether leaving/returning by a certain date is important.
So I decided to sleep on it and see what the storm timeline looked like on Saturday morning. That was uncertain but the flights weren’t, all Sunday flights had sold out overnight. Well, that settled that question. At that point the soonest I could change my flight fee-free would be to Thursday, and that was too long out of the office.
The storm developed and it looked likely that my flight back to DC in the early Monday AM might be the last round of flights to make it. Then, at 6PM on Sunday, the flight was cancelled. I knew the drill and rushed to my laptop to start figuring out options. They hadn’t cancelled any of Tuesday’s flights and I was desperate to get back in case of damage. But I knew it was foolhardy to book those if I was truly worried about getting stuck til Friday if all the flights in between sold out and the Tues flight was cancelled.
Mental Note: During major weather situations, resist the urge get on the first available flight, assess the likelihood of additional cancellations.
So they booked me on the first flight out Wednesday morning. It looked like the storm would have definitely moved through by then and I had my work laptop with me so I could get stuff done remotely. I also figured if the storm hit DC pretty hard, I was better staying here where I had power, unlike my plight in early July when Derecho hit and left me powerless for an entire week.
Mental Note: Planes could be wildly out of position (scattered at safe locations across the country) immediately following a storm, so even if the weather is ok, they might not be able to get crews and planes immediately back on schedule and still cancel your flight…
The next step was figuring out what to do with my rental car. It was scheduled to be back at JAX, almost two hours away, on Monday. I wanted to figure out how much it would cost to extend the rental to Weds AM or, since it was just sitting in the driveway most of the time at my parents, how much it would cost to drop it off at a closer airport location, such as GNV, only 45 minutes away.
Avis, whose customer service has yet to fail me, was happy to extend my agreement 2 more days at the same rate or let me drop it off at GNV by the deadline for no additional charge. The cost of renting a car for one day from GNV-JAXÂ to get to the airport, was less than half the cost of extending by two days (or more). So I opted to drop the car off and reserve another one for Tuesday/Wednesday.
Mental Note: Check if there are additional fees for returning a rental car to a different location or if extending the agreement is a better option.
Monday morning my upgrade cleared for my Wednesday flight – no surprise since the plane was half empty. And then Monday evening my flight was cancelled again. Boo. I rushed to my laptop and started looking at seat maps obefore calling to reschedule. It looked like the Wednesday afternoon flights were still running (and that the storm would be through the area) and the Thursday flights still showed a lot of seats free.
Things at work seemed to be progressing smoothly without me there, but it was still a long time to unexpectedly be gone, and I was getting stressed. So when I called the agent and she offered me a flight later on Wednesday, I took it. I did have a humorous exchange with the agent on the phone, noting that she wasn’t a weather expert but did she think the Weds flights would get cancelled? She good naturedly replied that my guess was as good as hers, but “let’s give it a try, you’ll know soon if they cancel them!”
I still maintained a little cautiousness and took the last flight out that evening rather than the early afternoon flight, mindful that if there were any more problems to be had or the weather didn’t clear up as expected, that flight would be the first one affected. And since the evening flight was almost empty, she saved the trouble of waiting for my elite status upgrade to process and just booked me straight in first.
I definitely feel fortunate to have been able to ride the storm out with family in an unaffected location and at the same time still very anxious to get back!!
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Heels First is the travels and tribulations of two twenty-something frequent fliers jumping into the world of travel. Join Keri and Jeanne as they tackle mileage runs, elite status, and of course–the perfect travel accessories.
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