Always have a Plan B

9 things that can help rescue a trip when your flight gets cancelled or delayed

A tale from my travels

Airport lounges can be too relaxing. There I was one evening a couple of weeks ago, glad the day was nearly over, checked in, security out of the way, at peace, nursing a glass of wine, just waiting for the gate number for my 21:05 flight to pop up on the screen…. And then realising that much later flights were on “last call” while mine was still “wait in lounge”. Something was wrong.

I checked my three flight apps (why does this nerd need three, I hear you ask – read on, I’ll explain). Two still showed “scheduled”. But on the third, “Overnight delay to 12:50” popped up. OMG. Just at a time that I have a deadline to get to a conference, and an awkward connection along the way, with little margin for error. Quick mental arithmetic told me that if I waited – and even if there was no further delay – I wouldn’t get to Sao Paulo until nearly midnight the next day, then have to find a hotel there to stay overnight, and not reach my final destination until late afternoon the following day – several hours too late. Even assuming I could get a seat on the next available connection.

I headed straight for the ticket desk. “Yes, it’s true”, she said, “but we haven’t announced it yet, as the supervisor is still arranging accommodation”. At which point, I went straight into Plan B mode, and negotiated a re-route on a different airline via Lisbon. The last available seat. With lots of smiles, the agent’s help, and good luck along the rest of the way, I reached my destination with a few hours still to spare.

I put my good fortune down to my very early training as a travel agent when I was in my 20’s (no business or life experience is ever wasted, however irrelevant it may seem to one’s current life) and incessant air travel since then.

When I told my story to a small group of others booked on the same flight, all frequent flyers, what I’d done, it seemed to come as a revelation to them. So I thought I’d write my mental 9 point plan here, in the hope that it will help at least one of my readers at some time in the future.

• Travel with hand baggage only. You can do it.
•  If you’re on a flight with a foreign airline (or you’re abroad and it’s your own country’s airline) check that the inbound flight is on time – if it’s badly delayed, yours will be too, in which case you may be able to get a jump ahead on these steps.
• Make a mental note of where the airside ticket or transfer desk is for your airline or the alliance they belong to. Most airline lounges also have one.
• Don’t get too distracted and, at least in the hour before scheduled departure time, keep an eye on the flight timings. The airport departure boards don’t tell the whole story – delays are often not posted until some time after the airline has decided (simply because they want to organise meals, hotels etc before telling passengers). Get information sooner by using apps that access the airline central reservation and operational systems – I use Flightstats and CheckMyTrip. Why? If you need to change flight plans, it pays to be at the front of the queue at the airline ticketing desk. By the time you finish there’ll be a long line behind you…
• When you reach the desk, first ask if the agent can make reservation changes. Some can’t, and will refer you to another desk – so queuing at the wrong desk can waste precious minutes.
• If the flight is just delayed, can you live with the posted delay? If it’s cancelled and the airline offers an alternative, does that meet your needs? If not, make an immediate decision – can you/should you just cancel the trip? It’s definitely the least stressful option.
• If you must get there regardless, you definitely need to know about “Involuntary rerouting”. This is when the airline puts you on another airline’s flight; it’s an agreement between IATA member airlines (so this doesn’t work for budget airlines). They really don’t want to do that, because they lose the revenue, and only do it without asking if a flight is cancelled and they have no alternative of their own within 24 hours.
• If it’s delayed (as in my case), it’s at the discretion of the airline, so you need to try to get the reservations agent and flight supervisor to agree to do this. You need to be (or look) desperate, utter the magic words “please can I have an Involuntary Reroute” and know exactly what alternatives will work for you. (and even with a reroute, you’ll still have the same entitlement to EU flight delay compensation).
• Therefore, before you leave for the airport, make sure that you’ve got a handy itinerary with other flight options to your destination with other airlines – for long flights, include those that require a transfer (for example, out of London check connections via Amsterdam, Frankfurt, etc). Don’t expect the agent to know - asking for a specific routing can really help. The alternatives need to be at least an hour after your scheduled departure – usually flights aren’t cancelled or delayed until the last minute (or at least they don’t tell you) so it’s rare that you can take advantage of an earlier flight. You may usually rely on a PA or travel department, but if this happens at 10pm on a Friday night, as it did to me, you’ll almost certainly have to make all the calls yourself.

I hope you never need this, that all your flights are on schedule and that you find flying as enjoyable as I do. But if you’re unlucky one day, perhaps some of these points will help you. Remember the magic words - “Involuntary Reroute”.