{"id":14103,"date":"2026-08-10T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=14103"},"modified":"2026-08-09T23:42:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T05:42:14","slug":"monday-travel-hacking-when-flights-go-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/10\/monday-travel-hacking-when-flights-go-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Travel Hacking: When Flights Go Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Based on my personal observations from watching hordes of travelers stare at flight board delays and cancelations in abject horror yesterday, approximately 104.4% of travelers flying in the US had their flights either delayed or cancelled over the weekend. In no particular order, let&#8217;s talk about what a good travel hacker does when their flight is, <em>err<\/em>, impacted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>When your plane is delayed more than an hour, or when your captain tells you that they&#8217;re returning to the gate to &#8220;&#8230;.&#8221; (it doesn&#8217;t matter what the &#8220;&#8230;.&#8221; is, trust me), book a backup non-basic economy award flight <em>on another carrier<\/em> immediately. Why an award flight? So you can cancel it fee-free. If you don&#8217;t do it right away, inventory might be instantly gone when the cancellation is official. Why another carrier? You don&#8217;t want it cancelled as a double booking. Once you&#8217;ve done that, do it again on a third carrier if you can.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Do three things simultaneously and immediately when a cancelation is official, and when one of them works you can cancel the other two:<br><br>&#8211; Reach out to the airline on <s>twitter<\/s> X and ask to be rebooked<br>&#8211; Call the customer service line and ask to be rebooked<br>&#8211; Go to the airline lounge and ask to be rebooked<br><br>Note that none of these are waiting in line at the gate or the customer service counter. Don&#8217;t do it, it&#8217;s not going to go well for a dozen reasons, not the least of which is the garlic burger from Carl&#8217;s Jr shoved in the person&#8217;s now-translucent-from-grease backpack in front of you.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If you have a forced overnight, don&#8217;t take the airline&#8217;s hotel voucher; in the best case it&#8217;s going to be at an airport Marriott Courtyard overlooking a dumpster and the room&#8217;s smoke detector will beep once every 42.5 minutes, but only when the lights are off. We&#8217;re not going to talk about the worst case.<br><br>This is why you booked with a premium card for travel insurance, right? Let them pick up the hotel and your extra elite night credit too. Oh, and on that note, this will probably be a rare paid stay for you, so use up those FHR credits, Bilt stupid hotel credits, Citi hotel credits, etc. Don&#8217;t use points or a free night certificate though because you&#8217;ll have to fight with insurance about the value.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Meal vouchers often work on Starbucks, McDonald&#8217;s, and Chick-fil-A wallet loads, and if you want to cosplay a Paze churner, Dunkin too. You can do these from your FHR room too, no need to do it at the airport.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sure, travel insurance will cover a replacement $3.94 tee-shirt from Walmart, but it&#8217;ll also cover a $39.40 shirt from American Eagle.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Good luck, and at least be thankful you didn&#8217;t have travel between TN and CO via TX and CA, that is, unless you wanted to because reasons. Have a nice Monday!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>PS: Special thanks to everyone in Denver over the weekend (and the ones still stuck there today!)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"658\" height=\"644\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-6.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14104\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-6.png 658w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-6-300x294.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 658px) 100vw, 658px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Ok, maybe the beeping isn&#8217;t the most concerning part of that Courtyard smoke detector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Based on my personal observations from watching hordes of travelers stare at flight board delays and cancelations in abject horror yesterday, approximately 104.4% of travelers<\/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":[25,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel-hacking","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14103","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=14103"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14113,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14103\/revisions\/14113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}