For our travels last summer, I always booked a backup flight. At the time, every airline suffered from having too many flights scheduled with insufficient employees to operate them. Airlines would function on time when things were good, but all it took was a broken plane to throw things off. If there was a significant weather event, it could cause the airline’s operations to melt down.
By having flights on two airlines, we had protection if one of them massively delayed or canceled our flight.
While I thankfully never needed to use them, it didn’t cost us anything to book an extra flight. Airlines eliminated fees to change or cancel flights during the pandemic, and many haven’t brought them back (yet.) We used points to book our backup flights, so the points were refunded immediately after canceling the flight.
Starting in the fall of 2022, we noticed that almost all of our flights were leaving as scheduled, or, at worst, with only minor delays, which are inescapable when flying. So we eventually stopped booking backup flights. I figured that if we did experience a canceled flight, I could book another flight using points with a different airline, like I used to do.
Before a recent trip, I realized there was one thing I didn’t consider when booking backup flights. We hadn’t flown with Southwest since last summer. Over the holidays, Southwest suffered one of the biggest airline meltdowns ever. They’ve promised to fix the issues that caused over 16,000 flight cancellations stranding passengers for days.
Then, just a few days before our flight, Southwest had a ground stop due to a “Firewall” problem that caused delays for 1,820 flights, 43% of its schedule.
I started having flashbacks to my worst travel nightmare when I was almost stranded at Washington National Airport when Southwest canceled my flight without notice. Once again we were flying from DCA and taking Southwest. I asked Sharon if she thought I should book a backup flight and she said yes. I had already started to make plans.
I booked a JetBlue flight that was due to leave 3 hours after our Southwest flight. That would give me plenty of time to see if the Southwest flight would depart.
It ended up being a rainy morning in Washington D.C. While many flights were delayed, our Southwest flight was listed as being on time. That’s because of Southwest’s unique routing system, which got it into trouble over the winter. Our flight to Orlando started in Chicago, then to St. Louis and DCA. There were no weather issues in the Midwest so those flights happened without a hitch.
In comparison, our backup flight on JetBlue started the day by flying from Washington D.C. to West Palm Beach. A weather hold on flights to Florida that morning caused a 3-hour delay. This delay cascaded to the flight from West Palm Beach back to DCA, which was delayed 3 hours and then onto our scheduled flight to Orlando, which ended up arriving 3 hours late.
This was the advantage of having flights on two airlines with different route maps. While JetBlue typically flies planes back and forth from Florida to the Northeast, Southwest’s planes typically fly from one city to the next, not returning to the departure city.
Our Southwest flight left right on time and the JetBlue flight I booked as the backup ended up being the one with a long delay. I was able to cancel the JetBlue ticket from the airport as we boarded our Southwest plane.
I have another Southwest flight scheduled pretty soon and wonder if I should still book a backup flight.
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