American Airlines couldnt find people hotels and also couldnt reschedule flights, so we were stranded in the middle of the night at the airport for a few hours.
Flight cancellations have been surging around the country due to weather and the omicron variant hitting so fast. We suffered a flight cancelation, too, but it was due to maintenance issues. Because so many people have faced cancelations and been rerouted, its taking days to be rescheduled...
It started on Saturday. We had to check out of Volcano House at noon. Our flight wasnt until 10:45pm. So, for about 10 hours, we had no place to go and needed to figure out something for restrooms, shade, etc. I looked into whether our old resort had day passes and couldnt find anything. We decided to head back there because its fairly close to the airport, and they had the great waterslide and poolside food. We rented a fancy cabana, hoping that would work like a day pass, and hoping we wouldnt get kicked out! The fancy cabanas are $100. While we were there, I got my parents a few souvenirs as a thank you for taking care of our dog, and we bought dinner there, too. So, hopefully they dont care too much that we hung out at their pool all day!
We arrived around 2:30am and had to check out by noon, but they took good care of us for those few hours.
the pool. It felt like the perfect way to end our trip and say goodbye to Hawaii. We got out of the water around 6pm, after the sun had set and the wind picked up. We got dressed in long pants and set out to drop off our rental car. Everything went smoothly at the airport. We boarded our American Airlines on time and were ready to go. Then all the lights and air went off. Turns out, malfunctioned. They worked on fixing it for about an hour before finally having us deplane. They told us there was no way the plane was taking off tonight and handed us cards to call the airline and try to get rebooked.
At first, they were working to get passengers set up at a partner hotel. Then they came on over the speaker and said their partner hotel was now sold out, and a lot of places nearby were booked. They basically told us to reserve what we could. We have some American Express points that are linked to Marriott Bonvoy, so we went online to see what we could book. The Westin Hapuna resort was available, so we booked
Saturday overnight into Sunday was rough due to flight cancelations and having nowhere to go, but this maybe makes up for it! Two bonus days of vacation at a beach hotel!
it. In hindsight, we should have booked with dollars because maybe we could have gotten American Airlines to pay for our hotel. Oh well, at least we had a place to stay!
I sat on the phone trying to get through to American Airlines while the kids slept on the cement outside the airport. Andrew waited for our bags. It was really a difficult couple of hours. When I got through to American, she couldnt help me because still showed we were on the plane. I asked her if we could at least leave the airport and get our kids to a hotel to sleep. She said no. She said because the flight is showing up as delayed, she couldnt let us leave the airport without losing our tickets. It took ages, but finally updated. The next flight they could reschedule us to was Monday night at 10:45pm. Thats 48 hours after our original flight. Fine. We booked it.
The next challenge was getting to our resort. It was about 1am, and there were no Uber or Lyfts available. Taxi numbers werent answering their phones. There were hundreds of stranded passengers waiting for transportation.
Every time a car or vehicle pulled up, passengers swarmed around to see if they could get on, too. It took us about an hour, but Andrew bolted for a taxi that pulled up. Some smart passenger had managed to book it online, and it was a van. They were heading north and would take extra passengers heading in the same direction. They told Andrew he could board. He frantically waved me over, and I struggled to wake the kids up.
