{"id":10012,"date":"2024-07-22T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=10012"},"modified":"2024-07-21T08:38:44","modified_gmt":"2024-07-21T14:38:44","slug":"mayham-recovery-preparations-for-next-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/22\/mayham-recovery-preparations-for-next-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayham Recovery: Preparations for Next Time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Introduction<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>After <a href=\"https:\/\/news.delta.com\/tags\/july-19-20-2024-operation\">Delta was Crowdstruck<\/a>, which caused massive delays and cancelations that continued for days, an AA flyer was overheard saying &#8220;at least I&#8217;m flying American and not Delta&#8221;. In case it&#8217;s not immediately evident, this phrase is more rare than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/spaceporn\/comments\/zo84cc\/the_oldest_known_earth_rock_was_found_on_the_moon\/\">finding Earth rocks on the moon&#8217;s surface<\/a> or than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/watch\/?v=1228166727963935\">John Hodgeman throwing socks at an audience<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Self-Insurance<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Could you have predicted this outage and pivoted away from Delta early? Probably not this one in particular, but in general it&#8217;s safe to assume that a <a href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/search?q=airline%20meltdown&amp;hl=en-US&amp;gl=US&amp;ceid=US%3Aen\">US airline will meltdown at least a couple of times a year<\/a> and if you fly a lot, you&#8217;ve got a reasonable chance of getting caught up in a meltdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;re lucky though, because travel hackers are uniquely positioned to insure themselves against events by realizing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Most non-basic economy award bookings are easily refundable<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>To insure yourself against meltdowns, book a backup flight on another airline at least a few hours after the flight you really want to take, then refund it when your original flight looks like it&#8217;s going to work out. If there&#8217;s a meltdown, refund your original flight and take the backup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s really that easy, but of course there are a few failure modes, specifically:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Sometimes points bookings have a cancelation fee<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sometimes you have to pay a few extra points for your backup to be cancelable for free<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>You might forget to cancel your backup or original flight<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;ve got a lot of points though and can set a reminder in your phone, none of those probably matter that much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Conclusion<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Booking a backup award ticket on another carrier before a meltdown saves you after the meltdown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Happy Monday!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"684\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/2ed1b787-f99f-4cda-84c0-52c910280058-3249-0000063c9e48f884_file-1024x684.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10014\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/2ed1b787-f99f-4cda-84c0-52c910280058-3249-0000063c9e48f884_file-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/2ed1b787-f99f-4cda-84c0-52c910280058-3249-0000063c9e48f884_file-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/2ed1b787-f99f-4cda-84c0-52c910280058-3249-0000063c9e48f884_file-768x513.jpg 768w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/2ed1b787-f99f-4cda-84c0-52c910280058-3249-0000063c9e48f884_file-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/2ed1b787-f99f-4cda-84c0-52c910280058-3249-0000063c9e48f884_file-1320x881.jpg 1320w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/2ed1b787-f99f-4cda-84c0-52c910280058-3249-0000063c9e48f884_file.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">What&#8217;s the backup plan when your pizza joint has a &#8220;vendor technology issue&#8221; and your pizza shows up with Kiwi though?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Introduction After Delta was Crowdstruck, which caused massive delays and cancelations that continued for days, an AA flyer was overheard saying &#8220;at least I&#8217;m flying<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10012"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10017,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10012\/revisions\/10017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}