I am so sorry for all of you or your relatives who had flights cancelled. I can see the San Diego airport from the end of my street and noted about 40 Southwest planes just parked at the airport two days ago.
I got very lucky. My daughter was making her way to San Diego for the first time since the pandemic started. This Christmas was very important because my parents are not doing well and they were very anxious to finally see my daughter. Plus my nephew's baptism which was suppose to happen in April, 2020 ,was finally scheduled for Dec. 23 and my daughter is his godmother.
The Monday before Xmas I looked at predicted weather and saw that Denver looked bad for Dec. 22 when my daughter was suppose to make a connection there on Southwest. I decided to spend the money and rebook her on Delta with a connection in Atlanta. It cost me $400 but I just knew Southwest was going to cancel her flight. My daughter was about 30 minutes from landing in San Diego when we saw on Flightaware that her plane was making a turn and was diverted to Las Vegas. Turns out San Diego had developed bad fog and the airport was closed to arrivals. Who would have thought weather would be an issue in San Diego??
I jumped on Kayak and saw there was only one seat availble for a flight at 8 a.m. the next day on an airline I had never heard of before, JSX. JSX claims they are "like flying your own private jet" with just 20 seats in business class seats leaving from a private plane terminal so that you only have to show up 20 minutes before your flight. My daughter's Delta plane arrive at 11:15 p.m. and she told us they were refueling and were going to take off for San Diego in 30 minutes. I didn't believe that was actually going to happen so I booked her a hotel just 4 minutes from the LAS terminal. As I predicted, at 12:15 a.m. they said the crew had timed-out and that Delta would leave the plane in Las Vegas with everyone's luggage onboard and the plane would leave the next day at 12:30 p.m for San Diego. Luckily my daughter had not checked luggage so she grabbed a cab and was at her hotel by 12:45 a.m.
Since many flights had been diverted from San Diego combined with the Southwest meltdown, the San Diego's airport was a complete zoo. It took my neighbor over 90 minutes for her daughter to grab her luggage and make it out of the airport parking lot. I was lucky because I was able to pick up my daughter from the private air terminal that is just 4 minutes from our house. My daughter loved JSX because it allowed her to sleep longer since she didn't have to get to the terminal until 30 minutes before her flight. With respect to luggage, JSX grabs your bag as you board the plane and hands it back when you exit the door. It was the best $200 I spent because the Delta flight ended up being late and my daughter would have missed the baptism. Delta sent a nice email the next day saying they would give my daughter 10k in Skymiles and they would pay for any expenses related to the diversion. The fog ended up creating a lot of havoc because flights were diverted for the next two nights. My daughter's original Southwest flight did get cancelled in Denver so my daughter would have been stuck there for at least a couple of days had I not made the change to Delta.
I feel so bad for all the people who were affected by weather or Southwest. My poor hairdresser got stuck in San Jose and missed three days fo work. There were no flights or rental cars until late tonight. My daughter feels incredibly lucky and it taught me to always check weather a few days before a flight when changes are possible.
