Hurricane Irene has already impacted my plans next week. Monday, I’m flying to Fort Lauderdale on business, and planned to take the 8:30am nonstop on US Airways. This morning around 11:30am, I received an email from the airline that my flight had already been canceled. Bummer! They provided a number to call and I got right through to an agent who rebooked me on a connection over Charlotte departing at 1:45pm. Fingers crossed that happens. I am working on a tight timeline next week, and don’t have much slack in my schedule for problems, but what’s one to do? I’m actually pleased that having updated my US Airways “Be Notified” profile, I received a relatively timely notification of my flight cancelation.
That said, I’m still a tiny bit surprised that they decided to cancel a Monday flight now. Turns out, US Airways has canned its entire operation at DCA for all of Sunday so there won’t be an airplane in place for my Monday morning flight. I won’t question their decision from the comfort of my couch, but I will say that it seems aggressive to put it mildly.
Pack your patience if you’re traveling on Monday. It could be a fun day at the airport.
My wife and child were scheduled to go out today EWR to DTW to get her bakc to college. Afternoon flight was cancelled yesterday. Switched them to a morning flight which was cancelled later in the day. There would have been no issues getting out this morning. Now they are scheduled to go out Tuesday AM the first flight available was Monday evening.
As you already know, the airlines are being careful to avoid the fines that would be imposed for 3 hour tarmac incidents. So they cancel quickly. An unintended consequence of passenger protection legislation.
If you really needed to be in FLL, why not be there today?
Amen! If the trip hadn’t come up just yesterday, I would’ve tried that. Actually, if I had been able to come up with the time to get home, storm proof the house, and get to DCA, I would’ve tried that.