Flight Itineraries Discombobulated by Weather!

During August, two couples who booked vacations through me experienced difficulties with their flight itineraries.

Flight delays are par for the course, but this time both had serious delays.

Fortunately, they both had travel insurance.

In the first case, flying in early August non-stop from LAX to Newark, to begin a Cosmos Tour in New York, the young couple anticipated no problems until they arrived at the airport on a clear morning in Los Angeles to learn their flight had been cancelled due to weather.

Checking around, they soon learned that all flights to the greater New York City area were cancelled for the day.  Despite it being a clear, sunny day on both coasts most of the day, an electrical storm was forecast to arrive in NYC during the window when their flight would arrive that afternoon.

Through Cosmos, they had roundtrip air and 1-night pre-tour hotel stay in New York City before the tour.  They would miss that first night at the hotel and the anticipated fully independent day on their own in New York City.

What could they do?

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Flash forward to Saturday night.  

At 8:24 PM on Saturday night, I received a text from another client, whose flights were scheduled to arrive in Calgary for a one-stop change of planes to their ultimate destination of Rome to catch their Princess Cruise in Civitavecchia.

They had tried to add a pre-cruise hotel stay, but booking a couple of months before travel found no hotel availability with Princess, with whom they had EZ Air. They did not want the extra level of concerns regarding transfers to and from an independent hotel before the cruise.

Jack's text said they had landed in Edmonton --- 186 miles from Calgary.  This retired couple had landed to refuel, because heavy winds stopped their plane from landing at their hub airport, Calgary.

What could they do?

Bottom line, both could be assisted using phone numbers for the respective En Route Services, with info found in their travel documents.  While they had contacted me initially, we would all be relying on the assistance provided by trip interruption experts to track the situation, because they had booked air as part of a package with their tour or cruise.

When all is said and done, no one will be happy about these flight delays, but at least they know additional expenses of travel delays will be covered by insurance.

The odd thing is that the young chose to fly in a day early to avoid a problem of missing their tour, but if they had left their flights on the schedule of the tour, that storm would have passed by the time they flew east.  On the other hand, if the retired couple had flown in a day early for their cruise, they would have made it on time for their hotel.  

That's just how weather tends to be: unpredictable.

Air travel itself is in many respects like the weather.

Unfortunately, we can only be positive of the right course of action when we look back at the weather and completed flights.

As of Monday, the retired couple had arrived in Rome, and Princess En Route Services was working on flights to reach their second port of call in Palermo, Sicily.  It was already too late for the first stop after Rome.

The travelers will file a claim for missed cruise days and out-of-pocket expenses caused by the delays, but they have still lost part of their trip.

Bottom line lesson is that travel insurance is not just for medical emergencies that might force you to cancel your vacation.

Travel Insurance helps make a bad situation a bit less painful.

And we wouldn't want to let a few inconveniences stop us from living the life of our dreams, would we?

Wes