What to do if your flight is delayed

I was recently on a trip to Israel, and going to an important business meeting. Some would call this the trip from Hell. First of all the trip would take about 18 hours to complete which is enough to make most people cringe, knowing they would be in a small seat for that many hours [...]

I was recently on a trip to Israel, and going to an important business meeting. Some would call this the trip from Hell.

First of all the trip would take about 18 hours to complete which is enough to make most people cringe, knowing they would be in a small seat for that many hours next to strangers. But I had a plan. Ipod was full of music, a few movies rented, and lots of games to pass the time.

On one flight from Australia, I ended playing with my iPad the entire flight, and did not loose the battery in the 10 hours!

So, back to the story…

We boarded our Delta flight ontime, and ended up sitting on the plane for 1.5 hours. The captain told us several times, there was a maintenance problem, and it would be fixed in 10-15 mins. Then 20 mins later, he would add another 10-15 mins. He did this to stall us for 1.5 hours!

They then told everyone to get off the plane, so we did where we sat in the airport for another 3 hours.

This caused my flight connection in Atlanta to get missed completely. So, now that created some interesting things. I found out the only flight to Israel was the next evening from JFK.

So after many phone calls, hotels, we got it all worked out. The plane was ready and we flew to Atlanta, got a hotel voucher to sleep at a local hotel, and got 3 hours of “sleep”. Then had to take first flight out to JFK airport.

From there on out it was normal.

But here is what delta did.

They gave us $50 voucher for our trouble. And a free hotel stay.

Is that good enough compensation?

We did not think so, so my travel partner complained to the airline and they immediately handled it. They gave us both a $150 flight voucher we can use. They would NOT have done this unless we complained.

When can you get compensation?

Usually, the only way you can get compensation is when it’s the airlines fault. Weather does not get anyone compensation, as the airlines cannot plan for good or bad weather. But, they can compensate you and should when it’s their fault, like a mechanical issue or when there is a flight crew mishap or missing captains to fly the plane.

Know your rights as a customer and if you don’t think your compensation is sufficient, then say something about it. Doing this, got us a $150 credit on our next flights. Is that good? Well, it helps, but I hope I don’t ever have a nightmare situation like I did there.

I’ve been traveling the world for years with my Resorts360 vacation membership and not had much of any delays or problems. I guess you could say I was lucky for not having much travel interruptions. But this one almost cost me a consulting job, due to coming a day late to Israel.

One thing I did was made sure I booked my travel 1 day early – Just in case and I am so glad I did that as if I would have missed the events I was traveling to, it would have meant $1000′s of dollars in lost revenue for my company.