CANCELLATION OF OUR FLIGHT

I wondered how long it would take before someone posted this type
letter. As were thousands of others, I was attempting to travel during
the series of storms that disrupted service up and down the East
coast. I ended up sleeping in an airport for three days. For those who
might not know, checking online or attempting to switch flights online
was impossible. The airlines even posted – at least in Atlanta – that
their online services were unavailable. The phone lines were
completely over-whelmed; it took more than 24 hours to reach anyone.
The airlines and airport authorities tried their best to provide small
measures of comfort to stranded flyers, but once again, the sheer
number of passengers and the worsening weather conditions made it
tough going for all concerned. Food ran out, places to sleep (or more
realistically, rest) were scarce and access to information was
extremely difficult. However, most of us accepted the situation was
not created by a lack of planning nor a lack of concern for customers,
but rather by nature. Stopping a major blizzard is – at least as far
as I know – well beyond human capacity. Flying in such weather is
equally impossible. Many of us decided to make the best of a bad
situation and spent those long hours making friends, sharing whatever
resources we could locate and, at one point, going outside to play in
the snow. Am I ranting and raving at Delta for stranding me? NO! Am I
entitled to compensation of some type? Not according to my point of
view. Had Delta bumped me off a flight, had the plane developed an
issue prohibiting flying or something of this type I would expect the
airline to compensate me. However, acts of nature are specifically
excluded from such compensation. If you doubt this, simply check the
small print on your ticket or pass.

If you are worried about your flight being cancelled it is on you to
call and check on the flight status, this can be done by phone or
online.

Expecting a personal phone call from the airline is not going to
happen, do you really think they have the staff to do this???

Your reservations, your responsibility to keep yourself updated
appropriately.

You do know there was a blizzard on the East Coast on December 26th,
right? You were not alone in being stranded! And thousands of people
were calling the airlines... you would have been better off checking
status online. I assure you, the airline employees had a lot of
customers to deal with and reaching out to proactively announce that
there was a blizzard wasn't practical.

By the way, what airline was it? This letter doesn't seem to have gone
to any airline.

It was due to the call volume. I too was traveling and got a message
when I called Continental that said that due to the weather emergency
they weren't able to answer the phones.

I was able to access the information about my flight status online
though.

Did you consider checking flight status online?

Did you watch the weather at all?!?!?!

There were tens of thousand of people stranded all across the country
because of the weather.

Poor you!

You think they should have called you? And everybody else?

You do realize that the East Coast, including Continental's hub at
Newark NJ were in the midst of a major blizzard forcing the
cancellation of thousands of flights, don't you? This situation was
completely out of the hands of the airlines, the can't control the
weather.

It was impossible for all the airlines to keep up with the volume of
incoming calls and they certainly were not able to call every
passenger.

Were you one of those caught in the fallout from that big blizzard?

I just don't think it's reasonable to expect the airlines to contact
all of those passengers who were left stranded. It was just too many
people and would have taken time away from trying to straighten it all
out.