Last year my wife and I were booked on a Delta flight to the west coast. Our first leg was cancelled due to weather in ATL which was going to cause us to miss our connection. And put us pretty close to missing the last west bound flight even if we’d tried rebooking that one. So we opted to spend the night at home and rebooked on the first flight in the AM.
We woke up early to an email letting us know that flight had been cancelled as well (probably due to flight crew rest rules, but they never would say why). We were told there were no other open Delta flights from any other airport within driving distance (RDU and CLT) so we were booked on a USAirways flight out of Charlotte instead. We jumped in the car and headed down the road with plenty of time to spare.
Got to CLT and when we got to the ticketing area there was a crowd of about 1000 all in line waiting while USAir’s computers were completely shut down!
Walked over to the Delta desk and explained the situation. Somehow they all of a sudden had two seats on a flight leaving 20 minutes later, so we ran through security and made it to the gate just before they closed the jetway door.