Flight cancellations disrupt summer travel plans for many

Kelly Ann Sherry woke up at 2 a.m. last Monday at home on Long Island in time for her JetBlue flight a few hours later to Orlando, only to find that it had been canceled overnight.

The airline followed up with a solution: rebooking her and her two kids on a new flight - on Thursday.

“How is that even a resolution?” said Sherry, a travel adviser.

For Sherry, who was heading to Walt Disney World ahead of a cruise on Friday, it wasn’t. She got money back from JetBlue, avoided a $4,000 Delta alternative and shelled out $200 more than her refund for a flight on low-cost Breeze Airways with a long layover in Raleigh, North Carolina, getting to Florida after midnight on Tuesday.

She and her kids lost a day of their vacation and spent the next day exhausted, but things had improved by Thursday, when her husband’s flight took off as scheduled so he could join them.

Many travelers with flight cancellations during the busy, stormy summer season lose days of their vacation (or unexpectedly extend their holiday) when airlines struggle to accommodate them on packed planes.

Between Aug. 9 and Thursday, more than 40,000 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were delayed and more than 3,500 were canceled, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. Earlier this month, Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy warned travelers in the Northeast to prepare for flight disruptions “due to controllers calling out sick on top of difficult weather patterns.”

JetBlue, which has been especially hard hit recently, did not respond to requests for comment about its operations in recent days. Forty-five percent of the airline’s flights were delayed on Aug. 9, according to FlightAware.

Airline industry analyst and former airline executive officer Robert W. Mann, Jr. said that significant disruptions during heavy travel times can take several flights, or several days worth of flights, to get everyone from those disrupted flights where they need to go because there just aren’t that many seats available.

On top of the typical summertime thunderstorms that wreak havoc on airline schedules, Mann said there has been a reduction of available seats since April amid the impact of rising fuel prices. That makes it even tougher to find space for extra passengers when a flight is canceled.

“The accommodation problem is a very real problem and you run out of options very quickly,” he said.

Shalean Ghitis, a food influencer from South Florida, waited for days for her son and parents to return from a trip visiting family. They were supposed to fly home from Providence, Rhode Island, on a Saturday morning on JetBlue, but got a notice the day before that the flight was canceled and they were rebooked to Tuesday. They switched that to Monday with a flight into Palm Beach County instead of Broward, but that too was canceled and rebooked to Thursday.

Other airlines didn’t deliver either: a Saturday flight on Breeze was canceled, Ghitis said. When they tried to book a Delta flight from Boston on Tuesday, they ended up getting a refund because no seats were available.

“They’ve attempted like four different flights on three different airlines since Saturday,” said Ghitis, whose parents missed work and son missed his first days of school.

They finally got home on Thursday.

“I get like one or two days, but booking you for three days out just seems so crazy to me,” Ghitis said.

Expert tips

Peter Vlitas, executive vice president of partner relations at travel services company Internova Travel Group, said that especially when bad weather affects hub cities, the ripple effects can be widespread.

He said travelers should pay attention to travel alerts from airlines, which will generally offer customers the option of switching their flight in advance when disruption is expected.

“They’re really good at telling you that the weather tomorrow is going to stink so can you leave today,” Vlitas said. “If you can, you should.”

He said that when an airline sends the option of switching flights, there should still be room available; those spaces will likely fill up right away once flights get canceled.

Vlitas recommends using a travel agent, who can hunt for alternative airlines and routes on behalf of their clients. But if someone has booked on their own and faces a cancellation, he said it’s worth exploring creative options on the airline app or with a customer service agent. He said it might make sense to fly close to the desired destination and get a rental car for the final leg.

“Sometimes you have to help the person on the other end try to put a connection together,” he said. “If you’re coming to New York and the flights are canceled, are you willing to go to Washington and take Amtrak?”

Anna Brown, a travel expert at the flight deal alert site Going, said it’s helpful to monitor a flight tracking app to stay on top of news about any disruption. Then, she said travelers should give themselves the best shot at a seat by multitasking: Try to rebook on the airline’s app, call and get in line at the airport if they’re already there.

“If nothing decent turns up right away, keep checking back,” she said in an email. “Seat availability shifts as other people rebook.”

Brown said some credit cards include protections such as travel insurance, which could cover a hotel or other costs due to an airline cancellation.

Travelers should check the Department of Transportation’s customer service dashboard for a full picture of what airlines have pledged to do for customers in case of controllable delays and cancellations, Brown said. If a carrier cancels or significantly delays a flight, travelers can request a full refund if they choose not to travel with that airline. That approach can have a downside, experts warn, especially if travelers had a good price on the original flight.

If you cancel and get a refund but need to fly another airline the same day, “good luck finding a cheap ticket,” Vlitas said.

Stuck at the airport

Courtney Gray, a police officer in Washington, D.C., was returning from Jamaica last Monday when she got stuck in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, during a layover. After several delays, around 9 p.m., the flight was canceled. Airline employees told her the flight crew was delayed in getting to the airport by weather. The airline cited weather as the cause for the cancellation - which meant she didn’t get any food or lodging vouchers.

Gray’s flight was rebooked for noon Wednesday.

“I was like, ‘Excuse me?’” she said. She stood in line with scores of other passengers to learn that no other flights were available. She requested a refund and booked a flight the next day at 2:30 p.m. on Delta, then called the airline and asked to get on standby for a flight first thing in the morning.

Then she settled in at the airport instead of spending money on a hotel and transportation. “I work for a police department, so I’m used to sleeping in uncomfortable places,” she said. She has since filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation about the airline’s classification of the cancellation as weather-related.

She bought some airport grab-and-go food, slept on a bench for a couple of hours and made it onto the early-morning flight with a connection in Atlanta. On Thursday, she said a friend was still stuck in Jamaica after a cancellation on Tuesday and an ongoing delay.

“I’ve never seen this type of situation,” she said. “I’m not sure what’s going on with the airlines.”