Pivoting When Travel Plans Go Awry
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I like to plan trips pretty far in advance, largely because I can book all the tours I want at the times that are most convenient without anything being booked up. This has worked well for me on 99% of all the trips I’ve planned. Unfortunately, our final trip of 2022 was derailed only 10 days before we were set to leave.
Back in June I’d booked a trip to Peru to achieve a big bucket list item: seeing Machu Picchu. While we had a lot of epic adventures this year, Peru was always a shining beacon at the end of the calendar. That was until Peru’s (now former) president attempted a coup, declared himself dictator, and was swiftly arrested on December 7th. This set off a series of protests around the country that led to the closure of airports and the train to Machu Picchu. Tourists in the country found themselves trapped and several locals lost their lives.
We had no idea how long the protests would last or how significant the damage would be, but it was clear after a couple days things were getting worse, not better. While holding out hope plan A would happen as expected, I also started to formulate a plan B. After all, we had 11 days off work (using only 3 PTO days) and I wasn’t about to sit at home the whole time crying about a trip that didn’t happen. I started plugging random destinations around the world into Google Flights, seeing what options we had and trying to find somewhere that 1) is not unbearably cold in December, 2) had “reasonably priced” flights (this is very relative to it being last minute and one of the busiest travel weeks of the year), 3) didn’t require a visa to visit and 4) had plenty we could do on short notice.
A Golden Ticket – Mistake Fares
After lots of searching, I found a roundtrip fare on Air Canada from Chicago O’Hare to Tokyo Narita airport (with a layover in Canada) for the same dates as our Peru trip. Best of all, it was a premium economy mistake fare, which meant that the airline mistakenly priced the premium economy seats cheaper than the regular economy ones (it was a mixed-cabin fare meaning the long flights over the Pacific were premium economy and the short hops from the US to Canada were regular economy). Mistake fares are rare but they’re real and can happen at any fare class. These flights were refundable (minus a $300/person fee), so I jumped on them, risking the $600 in the case that Peru ended up happening (prices in the photo are in CAD). This risk assessment was based on minimizing my worst-case scenario, both by having a trip to go on at all and losing the least amount of money in the process knowing the price of these flights would go up if I waited.
Travel Insurance Woes
As Peru began to unravel, I looked into filing a claim with the travel insurance built into my Chase Sapphire Reserve, which I’d used to book the trip. Unfortunately, this was a big learning moment for me as I learned that civil unrest and war are not covered by Chase’s insurance policy. So many other things are, from illness to weather to terrorism, and I was left shocked and frustrated. Of course, even if I’d known this in advance, I’m not sure I would have taken out an additional insurance policy, because really what were the odds of this happening right before my trip?! But take this as a lesson: if you’re planning a trip to a country with even a chance of political chaos, you may want to pay a little more to protect your investment.
The travel agency we’d booked the trip with did allow us to postpone up to a year, so only 10 days out from our trip, we decided to pull the plug and move Peru to 2023, taking the spot of another trip we’d wanted to take (that one will now have to wait until 2024).
Cue the Bomb Cyclone
Once we’d finally made the decision to go to Japan, we felt a huge weight off our shoulders, no longer dealing in hypotheticals. I quickly got to work mapping out an itinerary and booking hotels. Then just 5 days out from our trip, the weather forecast started looking bleak across North America.
Each airline has a travel alert page and my gut told me check on United’s website, where I saw they were predicting travel disruptions in the entire Midwest over our departure day (and the days before/after). There was a chance we’d be stuck at home days longer than planned, so I immediately got on the phone with Air Canada and United (the first leg of our trip was operated by United) and each airline originally told me to talk to the other one… helpful. After hours on hold, I got Air Canada to change our outbound flight from ORD-YVR-NRT to LAX-YVR-NRT and we bought an additional ticket on Southwest to get from Chicago to LAX a few days earlier, working remotely from an airport hotel for a couple days to beat the storm.
Every time I thought I’d overcome the last hurdle of getting this trip off the ground, another one popped up. The next day I woke up to an email alert from Air Canada informing me they were predicting bad weather in Vancouver (YVR), where our connection was. It really just felt like a comedy of errors at this point and if we didn’t laugh, we’d cry, so we chose to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Several more hours on the phone with Air Canada and they rebooked us on a direct flight from LA to Tokyo on ANA, a partner airline of Air Canada (part of Star Alliance).
I know the saying is “3rd time’s the charm” but in this case, the 4th time was. Four different itineraries to attempt to get out of Chicago for the holidays, but we ultimately made it to Japan safe and on time. I’m a project manager who deals with logistics every day, but this was one of the most stressful planning situations I’ve ever dealt with. However, perseverance paid off and was a good reminder of what to do if your travel plans go awry. I have previously discussed 6 ways to reduce your chance of air travel issues up front, but if they happen, here’s how to pivot:
Know Your Rights
When there’s issues with your flights, it’s helpful to know what you’re entitled to both from the airline and any travel insurance you have. Unfortunately, there are no set requirements for consumer protections for air travel in the US, so each airline gets to set their own policies. The US Department of Transportation’s website has compiled this information to make it easier to understand what you’re owed – you can access it here. Note that the reason behind the flight delay/cancellation matters: if it’s an issue in the airline’s control (ex. mechanical issues), they are generally much more helpful than when it’s a weather issue.
Also, make sure to refresh yourself on your fare’s cancellation policies. Some fares can be cancelled for a full refund or at least a travel credit, while others are much stricter. I’d booked our flights to Peru on American Airlines through the Chase travel portal (rookie mistake: never use the travel portal!) and was only able to get a fare credit that expired in July 2023 (12 months from when I bought the ticket) and had to be on an American Airlines-operated flight: no partner airlines allowed. This meant that the credit was useless for our new Peru dates since they’re after July 2023, but we were able to apply them to a couple of trips in June instead.
Last week’s winter storm set off a chain of events that caused Southwest’s entire system to melt down, cancelling over 70% of flights and stranding thousands and thousands of bags at airports across the country. While they’d originally blamed this on the weather (not a good excuse when every other airline was back to normal operations quickly), they ultimately apologized and allowed customers to submit receipts to get reimbursed for reasonable expenses and also offered travel credits for future trips. This extreme of an airline meltdown is rare, but if you’re caught in the middle, you’ll want to get as much money back as possible.
Look for Other Options
At the first sign of trouble, assess your options. This could mean days out (like in the case of my Peru trip) or hours before (for last minute weather issues, mechanical problems, etc.). Find what other airlines are offering similar flights to your destination or look for other airports to fly in/out of. If you’re just taking a quick flight, consider driving instead or leaving earlier/later than originally planned.
While it’s easy to remember to check the forecast for your departure and destinations, make sure to keep in mind anywhere you have a layover as well. If needed, you could try to switch to a flight that routes through a different city, like we did when removing Vancouver from the ORD-NRT equation.
Get in Line ASAP and Talk to a Human
When things go wrong, airline ticket counters and virtual phone trees are quickly inundated with requests. I called Air Canada as soon as I woke up to the email alert and the wait time was already 2 hours long at 6AM. I don’t want to think about how much longer it got later in the day.
Of course, while I was on hold the automated voice asked me to consider calling back later if my flight was more than 48 hours in the future, but I stayed firm knowing my options would dwindle if I waited. The earlier you try to switch flights, the more options there are – if you wait, seats will be taken by other people trying fix their own flight issues. It’s every man for himself and you want to be at the front of the pack.
It’s also critical to get a real human person to help you. Air Canada’s automated message assured me the customer service agents would only have access to the same options I could see in my account. This wasn’t the case at all. In the self-service part of Air Canada’s website, I only had the option to change my flight to other flights that all went through Vancouver, which didn’t solve the problem. I also could only see Air Canada-operated flight, not partner airline flights like the ANA one the agent was able to book for us.
Some agents are better than others, and if you get one who’s really unhelpful, you can always consider hanging up and calling again to talk to someone else (but if you spent hours on hold this may not be ideal).
Get Creative
At the end of the day, my #1 priority was ensuring we had an epic vacation to end the year strong. This ultimately meant completely scrapping plan A and then moving on to plans B, C, and D when Mother Nature took over so much of North America. I spent days Googling and assessing my various options, trying to piece together the puzzle. When shit hits the fan, brainstorm other modes of transportation (planes, trains, boats, cars, you name it) and get creative with locations and scheduling. The biggest downside here is it can be expensive, especially dropping money on an entire new trip at the last minute, but if that’s an option for you, it can be a way to make lemonade out of some pretty sour lemons.
All the work of the past couple weeks that went into getting us to Japan was so worth it – we had an incredible trip! I recapped the entire trip, broken out to Tokyo, Kyoto + Osaka, and overall Japan tips. These will help you whether you plan it a year out or a just a week!
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