Changes to travel plans happen sometimes
By maximax8
@maximax8 (31053)
United Kingdom
October 29, 2011 1:39pm CST
Travelers going to and from Australia on the airline called Qantas are not happy because due to workers strike action it has decided to land and keep all its planes on the ground.
In 2005 I bought an airline ticket to Cancun in Mexico but a hurricane happened. My flight was cancelled and I got a refund. Instead I chose to go to the Maldives.
In 2010 I booked a flight to Halifax in Canada but it was cancelled due to the travel company going out of business. I found out by email and it said a refund would come in 3 weeks. It made me very worried about getting another flight so near to departure. In end I changed my mind and booked to go to Vancouver in Canada. However I was nervous with British Airways having many strikes.
Have you ever had to change your trip for a similar reason?
What would you do if your booked flight gets cancelled: miss out or book another trip?
2 people like this
5 responses
@marguicha (215389)
• Chile
1 Nov 11
Hi Maxine,
I have never had to change planes for any reason although sometimes the plane took more time to reach it´s destiny due to bad weather.
But my sister who lives in Valdivia (South of Chile) came this weekend (a long one for us) and she had a very difficult trip due to a volcano that was throwing ashes on the way.
@bounce58 (17387)
• Canada
4 Nov 11
I've also had some experience of flight delays due to bad weather. I was sitting in a plane once, at the end of the runway at Chicago's O'Hare(?) airport waiting for a go signal to taxi off. It was so windy, that they could not let us go. We were in the plane for 4 hours, and there was talk about going back to the terminal, and maybe changing planes.
Anyway, 4 hours after, we did get to fly.
@bounce58 (17387)
• Canada
4 Nov 11
I've never had a personal flight cancelled for some reason or another. I did have some business flights that got cancelled, but since our company had a travel agent, they secured getting us another flight right away.
I think that the airline industry is really in a tough bind with their staff. As they continue to cut costs to increase profits, they would always be in trouble with the possibility of strikes.
@jennybianca (12912)
• Australia
31 Oct 11
The Qantas debacle is huge news here, particularly as yestarday it messed up all the worlds major airports with grounded planes taking up space everywhere.
Actually it is not the workers on strike, it's the management actions.
At some airports they were taking passengers off planes minutes before takeoff.Quantas is one of the worlds biggest airlines, so you can imagine the disruption it is causing. I read in the paper this morning that our governemnt is going to hire planes from other airlines to get all the aussies back from their various overseas destinations.
I had problems many, many years ago when I was flying from Frankfurt to australia. There was a blizzrd at frankfurt, so I was stranded there for twelve hours until they took me by bus to Munich to catch a flight there. As we neared Syria, there was a whole lot of stuffing around as the pilot decided to buy fuel from Syria which the plane did not need, but it was politically correct to do so. Next destination was Kuwait to pick up passengers. Bingo. the Qantas staff went on strike. I was stranded at Kuwait. The tension was very high, as the Iran/Iraq war has just started!
@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
29 Oct 11
I don't think that I have experienced a situation where I had to change my plans completely. In some cases my flight was delayed for many hours because of the weather, but I was still to travel, I just had to spend many hours at the airport. One time we had to sleep on the floor at the airport, because there was too much snow and everything was delayed. Last time my friend was going on vacation their flight was cancelled because of the ash from the Islandic volcano. My friend was so disappointed because she had been looking to that vacation for months.
If the same thing happened to be I would probably book another trip instead of the one that was cancelled. I would try to look at it from a positivw point of view and an be happy that I got the chance to visit another place instead. There are a lot of places in the world that I would like to visit, so it wouldn't be hard to find another destination that I also find interesting.
