Suppose you have to make a connection to Europe, there's only one flight per day, and it becomes obvious that your originating flight is not going to leave on time to make your connection. Do you a)Take the flight to your connection city and kill a whole day, or b)Go home and try again the next day? What if you go home and your bags are already checked? Do you hope to find them waiting at your destination? With all of the "security" snafus, this seems like people could be facing this dilema fairly often.

We had this happen to us and spent the first night of our Paris vacation in Baton Rouge.Three flights in a row were cancelled for mechanical difficulties; Delta paid for dinner, a hotel and vouchers for lots of free drinks! We should have gone on to Atlanta- at least we would have been part way on our trip and there for the next available flight. We didn't because Delta said there were no hotels available in Atlanta!!<BR><BR>This April we are trying again- this time we are taking the 9;30 am flight instead of the 1:30( the last flight of the day), and we will have 5 hours to sit in Atlanta before our next flight. At least this gives us two chances to get to Atlanta. Kind of a nuisance to have such a long wait, but the Delta clerks at the airport say that people missing their connection to Europe happens more often than most people realize.

Go to the connecting city and spend the day there. Nothing says the flight from your originating city will leave on time if you do go home and try the next day.

I'd go to the connecting city and overnight there. Also, I don't usually book flights that don't have a lot of time between connections. Technically, you only need, for example, a half hour between flights at O'Hare. I'm not comfortable with that since flights are so often late, and would rather have to kill a few hours at the connecting city airport. Then if my originating flight leaves late I don't have to worry about making the connection.

Go the the connection city and kill the day.<BR><BR>This happened to me last year on my trip to Paris. I had planned for a three hour layover in Houston between flight from San Antonio -- but the weather was bad in Houston so by the time the flight finally left San Antonio, it was past time for the flight to leave Houston. Since that time of year the weather is frequently bad, I figured it was better to be in Houston the next day waiting to leave. I spent a pretty boring day in the Houston terminal but at least I got out that day even though the weather was bad that day as well. Also, the agent in Houston told me that the international flights are usually cleared for departure first so they aren't as likely to be delayed for departure as the domestic flights.<BR><BR>And, by the way, if you do get stranded somewhere, please, no matter how long you have to wait in line, don't be rude and downright obnoxious to the customer service people trying to re-route hundreds of people and trying to find hotels for them. I felt embarassed at the reactions of people taking it out on these folks who were doing their best to help in a bad situation. They didn't cause the problem (whether it's weather or mechanical or whatever) and they can't create extra flights out of thin air. It's a bad situation for everyone, but I had figured long before I even left San Antonio that I would most likely not be going to Paris that day after all so although I was also dead tired and waiting in the customer service line almost two hours after I got there in Houston, I tried to be as pleasant to the agent as possible and thanked her for her assistance. It made my day to see her shoulders lift a bit when I did so and certainly didn't cost me anything. And she did and excellent job of finding me a window seat on the flight the next day and extended by return date by two extra days at no additional cost when I asked if she could since I would be delayed getting there. The next day when I returned to the airport early, I again checked in at customer service where they gave me food vouchers for two more meals for that day.

Your luggage won`t go anywhere without you on the plane, so that is not an issue.

I am lucky to live in Atlanta... lots of options... so this might not work in other places... but we've done it successfully twice now....<BR><BR>You just stand at the airline ticket counter. When they tell you the flights been cancelled you just continue to stand there. Don't get mad at the person in front of you ... it's not their fault... But you just stand there and say "my whole trip hinges on my getting to "xyz" by "xyz"... if I don't make it my cruise ship (or travel group or only train or whatever) leaves without me ... you HAVE to get me there."<BR><BR>Each time we've done that we wound up on another airline, going by different routing, and getting to our destination on time. Other people in line turned around and went back home or settled in for the night at the airport.... we were merrily on our way to Europe!<BR><BR>Try it sometime....<BR><BR>Barry