Lucky Travellers

Back in October, we booked plane tickets to visit family for Christmas. We used flyer miles to book our flights at a leisurely departure time (11:30am) and congratulated ourselves on constructing such perfect plans.

Then we got a notice from the airline that our flight, which was supposed to go Ottawa-Chicago-SLC was changed to Ottawa-Chicago-Denver-SLC, but without really changing the times. I wasn't too thrilled about the idea, because I figured we'd have trouble getting out of Chicago on time and could miss our flight out of Denver. I called up the airline and they let me change to an earlier Ottawa-Chicago-SLC schedule, but we had to leave Ottawa at 6:55am. I wasn't too excited about it, but I changed it. You may remember last week's post about being on the phone with the booking agent when the phone was going wonky.

It's a good thing I changed it. Here's the notice that was on the United Airlines website last night when we looked at the travel forecast:

Denver snowstorm travel advisory

Due to the significant winter storm, Denver International Airport will be closed until noon, Friday, December 22. As a result, United is canceling all flights into and out of Denver until that time. Please continue to follow the suggestions below regarding rebooking on another flight. We continue to work to accommodate our customers and get them to their destinations safely and as soon as possible.
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A winter storm in Colorado is causing flights to be delayed or canceled. In order to make your travel as smooth as possible, United is offering a ticket waiver from December 20-27 for those impacted by the storm.

As it turns out, every flight in or out of the Denver Airport today was cancelled or severely delayed. They say there is a huge backlog of people trying to get in/out for Christmas.

Man am I glad I called the airline.