Flying This Weekend? Here's What You Need To Know

For Air Canada pressing the french options will usually get you to someone who speaks English just fine - it's our equivalent of "el primo numero dos"

All great tips and ones I second. I'm scheduled to fly PTY-IAD on Saturday and think it's unlikely to happen, though I'll give it a shot since when I called to rebook the only option was on Monday. Worst case scenario is extra time in Panama which isn't terrible although at this point I'd just like to be home. Lucky I have the flexibility to see what happens.

@K8 lol. you just said "the second cousin" The verb is oprimar, which means to press. i.e "oprima numero dos"

Greetings from the nation's capital!! Southwest has proactively cancelled most flights out of Washington DC after 2PM Friday, even though the storm isn't expected until later in the day. They were very good about EMAILing impacted passengers quickly, and allowing waiver changes to be made online. (It appears that United doesn't support waiver changes online, forcing customers to use one of the other methods you have suggested.)

I am going to gamble. Booked an run for Saturday on AS, PDX-BOS-PDX. I guess we'll see what happens!

Do airlines typically waive move-up standby fees for non-elites during these times? All the earlier flights are booked up. complicating matters it is AA booked with avios.

@ Coldagglutannin -- They do, absolutely. Your situation might be a bit trickier, but BA does have a travel waiver in place as well: http://www.britishairways.com/travel/gsanswer/public/en_gb?faqid=5426

I would start by calling AA and see if they can take control of the ticket. If not, you'll need to have BA talk to their liaison, which is a huge PITA, but technically possible. Once you get close to flight time it's definitely the operating carrier's responsibility, but it gets fuzzy beforehand. Good luck!!

@tiffany thanks! on hold now. second leg has already been cancelled...but its on a separate reso from the first leg...

Some airlines have said they will offer refunds as well; I believe Delta may be one of them, surprisingly...

Another well-written and enjoyable post, keep up the great work!

Update: AA wouldn't touch it. BA Executive club was very helpful and their hold line is much shorter than AA (30 min vs. 1 hour)

Excellent article, Tiffany. I can see you've worked hard on gathering all the information.

Woot, just landed and home in DC. Canceled meetings tomorrow in Chicago and got an opening on the last flight out of ORD and grabbed it. My strategy to avoid getting stuck for days there and messing up weeks of schedules.

I was scheduled to fly through JFK to FRA on Saturday. Delta rebooked me for free through DTW.

I'm flying on Sunday to Europe out of JFK. Any advice on how to know before anyone else that my flight is cancelled so I can jump on Monday rebooking options first?

@ Tom -- The simplest option is to Google your flight number, but you can also use FlightAware to track the inbound aircraft, etc. Paying attention will put you ahead of the game, really.

@Tiffany--I know a while back you had done a post on how to track incoming flights that mostly dealt with international segments and had mentioned that you might consider doing a post on how to do that for domestic flights. Did you publish one (I might have missed it)?

Also an accidental stroke of luck for me that might help other folks. I called AA to ticket an itinerary on hold and called the web support number by mistake and asked them to transfer me to AAdvantage. I was connected almost immediately but while chatting with the agent they said they had about 5000 calls on hold and another 4000 calls on virtual hold (call back). Since no one wants to be at the back end of that list, having the methods above is a great option, thanks for putting them together!

This is great advice. On Jan 24 during height of storm, I saw 5 people waiting for the booking agents inside the United Lounge v hundreds waiting in the general terminal at Narita. It's worth paying $50 for a day pass to the airline lounges if you don't belong.