Back to the OP: As others have said, it depends totally on the details of the terms of your particular ticket. The range of options goes from
A) You get a guaranteed seat on the very next flight and a voucher for lunch meantime.
to
B) Your original ticket is 100% forfeit and you have to pay the short-notice full fare to get the next open seat which is 3 days from now.
The typical reality for the typical US domestic traveler is you pay some fee below $100 and get a seat within the next couple of departures to where you’re going. Which might be a delay of a couple hours or a couple days depending on which airline & which destination.
It does also depend on the airline. Delta, as noted above, tends to screw you like there’s no tomorrow. AA, Alaska, and even United are pretty good about it. SW too. Generally speaking, the agents understand that life happens and will work with you. Other than Delta, I’ve never had an experience where they didn’t find me a seat on another flight.
Mindful of the risk, I always make sure I have at least a 6-hour connecting time. Piecing together flight sections makes it easy to choose departures without risky connection times. I’d rather cool my heels for a day at the airport, maybe even take tour of the city, than take a chance.
I am the champ at missing planes, I fly mostly Delta and American and have never had a fee to rebook a missed flight. But I only fly between busy cities like Chicago and NYC or Atalanta and Dallas so there are always many flights, which may have something to do with it.
I missed a flight out of Namibia on South African, but I barely even knew it. Showed up to the airport, was checking in, tags put on my luggage, and as the boarding passes were being printed out, the agent said, “You know you were originally booked on yesterday’s flight, right?”
As a sixteen-year-old away at a summer program, I managed to mess up my wakeup alarm and finally arrive at the gate 5 minutes or so after scheduled departure. The plane had already taxied to the runway.
There was some minor mechanical issue and they rolled the plane back to the gate to get it checked out. Since it was back at the gate they decided to go ahead and let me on.
I got some very odd looks when I got on…
The flight went fine except that (of course) my luggage was delayed a few days, but in that scenario I’m sorta sympathetic.
I missed a 3 AM flight from Guam to Seoul because I showed up at 3 PM. D’oh! They out me on another flight, no apparent charge (My employer was footing the bill and I have no idea what he was charged), but that insurance they try to sell you for airplane flights covers this very situation and I buy it every time now.
My wife and I were in a similar situation last year (Delta flight from Toronto to Chicago was delayed, causing us to miss our Japan Airlines Chicago to Tokyo flight). Japan Airlines booked us on the next days’ flight and we wasted one day of our vacation in an airport hotel. It was particularly galling because Delta managed to get another Japan Airlines passenger booked onto an ANA flight (they’re both part of Star Alliance) but JAL customer service refused to do the same for us (perhaps because they would be losing two fares instead of just one).
I had a nightmare missed flight (due to weather conditions, different airline was delayed) … I was told the next flight they would book me on was in 12 DAYS!!!
As far as they were concerned, it wasn’t their fault … therefore … they were doing me a favour by even offering to put me on another flight (I was threatened with having to pay for a “no show” fee and a full fare for that flight in 12 days).
Oddly enough - I didn’t have a spare 12 days to wait in a strange country … so I found another airline, got myself on the next flight (paid full price for the last available seat on the plane - business class) … and luckily I have travel insurance … and luckily the travel insurance refunded the ticket price (minus an excess fee).
I think my experience was fairly unusual and I just got the worst customer service person in the airline industry who was having a really bad day!!
As a rule of thumb, low cost carriers (LCC, eg budget airlines) will never rebook you. You’re late, buy a new ticket at full price. For international flights with full service airlines, I’ve always been rebooked at no cost.
Eg Air Asia… buy a new ticket
Thai or Qantas or Cathay Pacific, no problem rebooked with no fee. I am a frequent flier on those airlines (one world and thai FF) but I don’t have super high status or anything, only silver with Qantas)
I live in India. I’ve missed a flight twice, once by a day and once by a few minutes. Both times I had to buy another ticket. Both times on a low cost carrier.
The industry is definitely making it more obvious to everyone that part of an unrestricted (or less restricted) fare is in effect “insurance” against misconnects and other glitches.
You can buy a cheaper fare that lacks the “insurance”. And if you don’t buy the insurance then don’t end up needing it you’re money ahead. But if you don’t buy the insurance and do end up needing it, you’re money behind. Just like extended warrantees on expensive electronics or collision insurance on your car.
The (quite understandable) error is that folks tend to think of their purchase as simply being transportation from A to B.
It’s actually a bundle of transportation, baggage service, food, and trip insurance. Plus things like reliability, safety, legroom, entertainment, time-of-day convenience, end-to-end-duration convenience, and likely amount of pleasantness or unpleasantness.
The rest of those items matter too. It’s not just price and transportation. You get to pick how much you’re willing to pay for how much of the ancillary stuff. But you do have to pick; it isn’t automatic and all tickets on all carriers from A to B are not equivalent interchangeable commodities.
That must have been one epic dump; usually boarding takes like 10-15 minutes, even on airlines concerned about turnaround time like Southwest.
They basically just rebook you on the next available flight- essentially they take the approach that you bought a flight from point A to B, and they’ll give it to you, but once you’re out of your designated slot, WHEN they give it to you is at their discretion.
The one time I missed a plane was my own damn fault: I left my ticket at home. The guy at the airline desk actually drove me back home, in his own car (I’d been dropped off by a friend), and helped me search for it, then we sped back to the airport, missing the plane by minutes.
I was put on standby for the next flight, which was about an hour later, and I made that one. Funny thing was, I arrived at the hub airport (one-stop flight), only to find that the next leg of my standby flight was going to be weather-delayed. But, I had arrived early enough to make the second leg of my original itinerary, which was getting airborne before the bad weather arrived. So I made a mad dash to that plane and hopped on, arriving at my destination before my luggage (which was on the standby flight and didn’t turn up until the next day).
I’ve only missed flights due to delayed connecting flights. The last time that happened the airline rep apologized and began looking at her monitor, then making calls. I slept in the airport that night and flew home in the morning.
My gf, returning home from business travel, had her flight cancelled due to problems at the connecting airport (fire set by someone?). The workaround involved putting her on another airline’s nonstop flight, and she got home hours early.
