Winter always provides travel challenges. Count on it. But this winter has been a humdinger.
The one thing you can count on if your flight is delayed or canceled is that you will probably not get through on the phone. Trust me. I know. In the course of Sunday and Monday, I tried calling United five different times. Each time I went through an entire menu, inputting information only to get told to "Please try your call again later" and hung up on. By a machine. The ultimate insult.
I was on hold with Delta for 2 hours and 55 minutes trying to get a traveler on a different flight when she was missing her connection due to weather. Said traveler flew an entire segment, ran to the gate as the door to her connecting flight closed and was rebooked on the flight I was trying to get her on while I was still holding.
When weather threatens a trip, start by going to the airline web page and looking for winter advisory information. Often, you will see that change fees will be waived for travelers who want to cancel or delay their trip. What they probably won't tell you, is they might just give you a refund. And while the instructions tell you to call, you can often get this refund by canceling online. (Or at least credit for a later flight with no fees.) I learned this the hard way after my attempts to call United to cancel a flight to a winter advisory city. The advisory told me to call and change fees would be waived. I tried. Repeatedly. Then I sent a frustrated email to United asking for full credit as I was going to cancel on the web page because I couldn't through. When I canceled the flight, I was given the option for a full refund back to the form of payment. Would have been nice to know before all those calls.
Airlines are not required to give you a refund for acts of God (weather). They can simply give you credit. But often, if you ask, they will do so for customer service reasons.
Tip #1: For this reason, if I ever have a schedule change that causes me to book a second flight on a competing airline, I never cancel until about 24 hours out. Because if a sudden storm comes through, I want the credit or at least want to skip the change fee for use on another flight. (And I have changed flights at the request of the traveler only to have them change their mind again and want their original flight. Irritating, but less so if you never canceled the original flight.)
Tip #2: If you are stranded in a connecting city, the airline is not required to provide anything due to weather. However, if you will patiently stand in the mile-long line (which you probably need to unless you like the flight you were automatically booked on with three connections two days later), you might get somewhere if you politely ask if you could have a hotel voucher and/or a meal voucher.
And always remember to be gracious. How would you like to be on the other side of the counter?
