Last week, I saw a post over at One Mile at a Time of a lady going on a rant at the gate of her flight. Â I’ve included the video below (NSFW language)
When the original video came out last week, not much was known about this lady’s situation.  Reading the (many) comments on the original One Mile at a Time post, you see a lot of differing opinions, along with the dregs of the Internet, which is what most comments on popular articles are 🙂
A few days ago I saw a followup in the Daily Mail UK, which put a bit more context into the situation. Â The lady and her 2 daughters were flying from New York’s LaGuardia airport to Miami in order to embark on a Disney cruise. Â The inbound flight was diverted from New York and landed in Philadelphia (which is why you see her mention Philadelphia in the video) and didn’t end up leaving until 12 hours later.
While I don’t excuse the language or the rant, I can totally empathize with being in a stressful situation and watching a “trip of a lifetime” vanishing before your eyes.
So I thought I’d talk about a couple of things that YOU can do if you’ve got a trip of a lifetime
Dealing with transit delays
I am not as frequent a traveler as some, but I have been in a few situations with transit delays
- Our flight back from Reno to Chicago was delayed several hours. Â While this didn’t cause us any transit problems (as we were ending in Chicago), I believe the stress and exhaustion were contributing factors into a fellow passenger eventually telling my wife and I that we were “the type of people that shouldn’t have children”
- Our Amtrak train from Chicago to Denver got stuck behind a derailed freight train, causing a 13 hour delay into Denver. Â So instead of getting in to Denver at 7 AM, we didn’t get in until 8 PM. Â Our rental car place closed at 6 :-(. Â This delay was more complicated due to the fact that we were on a train with no Internet, but we were able to work things out by phone. Â Eventually I got over $1100 in Amtrak compensation for the delay, which helped fund over half of our next Amtrak trip!
These were the seats we were enjoying…. until our flight was canceled!
- On a recent flight to Dublin on Aer Lingus business class, we sat on the tarmac for 3 hours until our flight was CANCELED. Â At midnight local time, we were left scrambling without many options left to us. Â (SEE:Â 3 mistakes I made when my flight was canceled)
How to not put YOURSELF in this situation
Transit delays are going to happen, so I thought I’d share a few helpful tips you can do to a) minimize the chances of them happening to you and b) quickly resolve the issue if it DOES happen to you
- If you’re going on a “trip of a lifetime”, consider trip insurance. Â I am not a huge fan of travel insurance in most cases, but this would be the one type of trip where I’d consider it. Â Trip insurance probably would have been a minuscule fraction of the overall cost of this Disney Cruise
- If you’ve got a cruise or other type of big flight (think huge first class international flight), and you need a connecting flight to your destination, fly in the night before. Â As it turns out, this particular lady did exactly that. Â Her cruise was scheduled to depart at 5 p.m. and she and her daughters were trying to fly on a 9pm flight the night before. So even with the 12 hour delay, according to ABC News, the lady and her family DID make their cruise. Â The 12 hour delay was annoying and stressful but not devastating. Â Had they tried to fly to Miami the morning of, that same 12 hour delay would have been catastrophic.
- If you can’t fly the night before, consider flying earlier in the day. Â We talked a little bit about that the other day when we wondered whether an earlier flight or a later flight was better
- If you’re in a situation where your flight is delayed, be proactive! Â Don’t rely on the gate agent. Â While many gate agents are helpful and do the best they can, their #1 priority is NOT you. Â Consider calling customer service on the phone, reaching out to the airline on Twitter, or if you have lounge access, try there. Â Even if you don’t have access or have to buy a day pass, that may be better than relying on a 100 person line at the gate.
Again, we don’t know the full story in this particular case. Â They already were flying the night before, and they certainly may have done everything right and just got caught up in the moment. Â Since they ended up making their cruise, I hope they’re taking a bit of no-Internet downtime to chill out and relax!
Readers: Any other good tips to minimize the impact of travel related delays?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
I think when you are in the points and miles game, it is a little easier to take things in stride although flight problems are still stressful.
After Christmas this year, my family and I were returning home from a trip to Austin. We were flying Southwest but there weren’t enough seats for all of us on one flight. My husband and oldest were traveling on a flight that was supposed to depart later than the flight I was taking with our younger two. When we got to the airport, we checked and saw that my flight was majorly delayed. It was going to leave us with about 10 minutes to connect in Denver (which I knew wouldn’t be enough since the Denver flight was on time).
After my husband boarded his plane, I started making tentative plans in my head of where we would stay if we got stranded in Denver for the night. If we didn’t have as many hotel points as we do, it probably would have been a much more stressful thought. Even though I wasn’t pleased about the situation, I knew that I could probably find a Hyatt or Hilton or SPG property that would have points availability and we would be okay.
In the end, Southwest moved us onto another flight (that was departing even later…) connecting through Las Vegas. The original flight to Denver only had one other passenger continuing on to our final destination but the flight through Vegas had half of the plane going through so they decided to hold the flight out of Vegas.
It was crazy and stressful being stuck in the airport with two kids under 3 without help from my husband but we bought some ice cream and toughed it out.
We ended up making it to our hotel around 3am which was a good 5-6 hours after we should have but I lived to tell the tale and that is what matters.
Sometimes when you are in the moment, it’s hard to remember but all of the crazy and stressful situations you end up in will always make for good stories some day.
I think it’s also a little bit easier when you’ve been doing this awhile or have had it happen once before. I was with my family(my parents and sister-so all adults) and we were going to Egypt. We got weather delayed by that awful snow storm in Istanbul. I made some mistakes but I also had a lot better ideas and backup plans than my parents and sister. I think that was only because I have traveled a bit. I can completely understand a melt down, it’s hard and you start to panic, wondering what your best option is.
Also, can we talk about the fact that we are all supposed to get to our destination a day early in case of delays?! It’s kind of crazy and don’t think many people outside of the travel community think about this and some probably don’t have the finances to make this happen. It’s an extra hotel night, food and a day off of work.
In similar situations, will the agents in the lounge be able to help rebook just like the gate agents?
I am not sure if lounge agents have more access to things than gate agents – I could see arguments either way. I think the big benefit is that instead of 100 people at the gate, you might only have 1-2. Plus, they are used to helping elite members, so even if you’re not elite, they might be more helpful