I’m in Italy now, was supposed to go home (Ohio) from England on Friday. Does anyone have any idea how airlines might handle this? NW has no real info on their site, other than I can delay my trip home for no fee.
Thanks in advance
I’d imagine that in the current circumstances, the airline will honour your ticket as long as you return as soon as it’s actually possible, your problem is going to be the expense of extra temporary accomodation and sundries.
The airlines are eager to resume business, but as I’m sure you’ve heard nothing is flying in the United States but the military. The earliest civilian flight will resume is this afternoon but no doubt security will be tighter than ever. There’s probably no info on the website because the airlines just don’t have any info.
Better to get home late than not at all.
Airline delays are very tricky. I worked for a company that placed passengers in hotels, at a discount, when they were stranded at the airport. Most of this was weather delays. We had a couple crashes two. We served all the airlines but American.
We BTW were private a service to the airlines.
All the airlines would not pay for your room and food it if was an ACT OF GOD (snow, lightening etc) or a strike. Exceptions were first class passengers that always got everything covered by the airlines.
USAirways also paid regardless.
I learned it was tricky to anticipate delays as it isn’t so much what happens in your city but how it affects the connections.
For instance we had one really bad thunderstorm that was so large it delayed all flight over 2 hours. But the other areas of the country were also delayed so everybody STILL got out.
We had a HUGE snow storm in Minneapolis (we did 12 cities) and expected about 2000 stranded people. But for some reason the ground crew kept the runways clear and we only did 300 rooms.
I checked with the ops manager there and she said no one knows how bad it will be once the flights start but they usually give priority to international and the longer distance flights, under the assumption that if you were in Chgo going to Nashville you COULD’VE taken a bus as it is only 7-8 hours away.
Good luck.
Try re-routing to a close spot in Canada, and taking a train. Ohio isn’t that far away.