The good news is, I’m not sleeping on a rock hard twin mattress tonight, but rather in my own Sleep Number that my wife convinced me we had to have.  The bad news is that my trip back to see my family is pretty severely delayed, enough so that we decided to bag it for this evening and fly out in the morning.

Managing Pre-Trip Delays

A flight delay prior to departure from our home airport, or especially prior to having even loaded up the car to go to the airport, is a relative luxury in the world of airline irregular operations.  IRROPS.  What a nice way to summarize a massive dent in your plans.  I’ve previously shared my airline contact cheat sheet, and tonight I’m recommending you open that up and import those contacts into your phone.  If you’re delayed before you’ve left home, you have an opportunity to dial one of those numbers and not hang up disappointed.

A travel tip that I actually learned from a US Airways phone agent is this – if your flight is delayed, it’s a valid reason to be rebooked on another flight without fees.  It was represented as a DOT rule to me, which isn’t actually true, but it is nonetheless a business practice followed by most of the major domestic airlines.  I was lucky enough to know that my flight was delayed 25 minutes sometime around 4PM today.  At that point, I called US Airways reservations and just asked to go out first thing in the morning, as ExpertFlyer was showing availability and some bulkhead seats open to boot.  The change was made without issue and without fees because of the delay.

So What’s My Point?

In this instance, we are flying on an Avios redemption – 9000 points each, round trip.  One downside to Avios is that you cannot cancel and redeposit within 24 hours of departure.  That meant that I couldn’t just cancel the trip, get in the car and drive down to Philly like I wanted to do.  Not without tossing 27000 Avios.  However, the delay empowered the agent on the phone to change my flight without charging a fee, which is a rarity these days.

If you find yourself in a situation where you’re booked to leave on a late, or the last, flight, have a small child who is just going to be miserable as the clock ticks later and face an initial delay, consider calling in and trying to head out the next day if your schedule allows.  It is often the case, especially with later flights, that the delay will continue to roll into something longer – sometimes even a cancellation – so the earlier you rebook, the sooner you know that you have a seat on a flight more likely to go out on time.  Later flights that hit a delay will often continue to be delayed more and more, a rolling effect of other issues going on in the network.  Earlier flights tend to be on time more often as a result.

One note of caution, since I may have inadvertently turned on some light bulbs.  If you call and rebook for more than 24 hours out to work around the Avios rule, I’m not sure that you will be successful in cancelling and redepositing those miles.  Every time I have done this, US Airways has reissued the ticket on their own (037) stock, rather than modifying the British Airways (125) ticket.  At that point, BA will still recognize their PNR, but will not recognize it as an Avios award.  Requesting a refund is likely to only get you your TSA fees back and not the miles.

What’s The Deal With Those Twin Beds?

Since I pretended that you asked, I will answer.  When I was about 5, we moved and I got new bedroom furniture.  I had not one, but two, twin beds in my room – pretty awesome when friends slept over.  Thirty years later, those two beds are sitting in the same bedroom.  I am fairly certain that I’ve invented excuses to not visit because I didn’t want to sleep in those beds again, and I am absolutely certain that my wife has.  I will tell you one thing – when my folks move later this year, I am treating myself to a new bed for their guest room.

Have any delay coping mechanisms to share?  Found other circumstances where airlines take pity upon us plebs and waive fees?  What kind of bed should I get?  I look forward to reading the comments.