{"id":2768,"date":"2021-10-08T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-08T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=2768"},"modified":"2023-04-18T12:14:20","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T18:14:20","slug":"weekend-wisdom-flight-protection-when-things-go-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/08\/weekend-wisdom-flight-protection-when-things-go-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Wisdom: Flight Protection When Things Go Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Background<\/h4>\n

On Monday I was scheduled to fly home on a short-hop Delta flight paid for with 5,000 SkyMiles. As I\u2019m sure you can figure out from the post\u2019s title, that didn\u2019t really go as planned. The short story is that my aircraft had big dent in the airframe from the inbound flight to the airport. Delta posted an initial delay of an hour right when we were getting ready to board.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one thing I\u2019m good at, it\u2019s dealing with IROPS<\/a> when traveling. If there\u2019s another thing I\u2019m good at, it\u2019s making the best steel cut oats based breakfast bowl that you\u2019ve ever had, but why would you care about that? Let\u2019s stay on topic people!<\/p>\n

I have a cardinal rule when it comes to flight delays: <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

If the delay posted is an hour or longer, you need to have a backup option in place.<\/em> <\/p>\n

The moment the delay was announced, and I mean that very moment, I speed-walked to the SkyClub to avoid any lines at the gate, and simultaneously I made a call to Delta Reservations in case they\u2019d come back more quickly than the SkyClub (spoiler alert: they didn\u2019t). When I got to the SkyClub, I scanned my boarding pass and asked immediately to be \u201cprotected on the next flight\u201d to my destination. The agent was able to do that in about 15 seconds.<\/p>\n

Flight Protection<\/h4>\n

What is flight protection? It\u2019s when an airline holds a seat for you on another flight without giving up your seat on your original flight. Then you\u2019ve got the option to take either flight, whichever departs first. With most airlines, you can select a seat on both flights and you\u2019ll be on the upgrade list for both flights too if you\u2019re eligible.<\/p>\n

All you have to do to get protected on the next flight is to know how to ask. And asking is as simple as \u201cMy current flight is delayed. Would you please protect me on the next flight to XXX<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

Caveat: Some airlines will cancel any remaining flights on your itinerary if you miss a flight (I\u2019m looking at you United, the only airline that\u2019s screwed me multiple times with this), so after I scan my boarding pass on whichever flight departs first, I double check to make sure that the other flight drops out of my itinerary in the airline\u2019s mobile app. If it doesn\u2019t, then I ask the gate agent or another employee to take it off of the itinerary so the rest of my flights don\u2019t auto-cancel.<\/p>\n

My Conclusion<\/h4>\n

As you\u2019d probably guess, a dented airframe is more than an hour long fix. Delta ended up flying in another plane and crew to operate the flight, and it departed 6 hours and 5 minutes past the original schedule which is frankly pretty good for an event like this at a non-hub. I was already home and on my couch by the time that original flight departed though \u2014 I got there via the protected flight. <\/p>\n

Bonus: Delta proactively gave me 7,500 SkyMiles for the delayed flight without me contacting them, making that ticket a 1.5x SkyMiles earner. If only I could replicate that at scale.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
It\u2019ll prolly buff out, right?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Background On Monday I was scheduled to fly home on a short-hop Delta flight paid for with 5,000 SkyMiles. As I\u2019m sure you can figure<\/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":2,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2768","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\/2768","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=2768"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7189,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2768\/revisions\/7189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}