Extremely likely my flight will be canceled--rescheduling questions

The big problem is that you do not know what to reschedule to -- delay one day or one week. I would get someone live on the phone to talk to. This is really uncharted territory for everyone.

I have already booked all my hotels (at least 21 nights worth) and if I can't fly out within a few days I'm going to cancel altogether so I can minimize the penalties I'll have to pay for not showing up.

Yup, our flight was canceled. Air France just called us. I've decided that if we can't leave by Wednesday, we won't be going.

That's so disappointing. Hope you can get to Europe before Wednesday!! Best wishes!

Thanks! I'm crossing my fingers. I'm going to be bummed if we can't make it over there. But realistically it's not looking good.

Are any of the airlines flying to airports (e.g., in Spain) and then on to a destination if the end point is not in the ash-shadow? Specifically, our BA flight is Seattle-Heathrow-Istanbul. I do see that the BA48 flight for 'today' is cancelled (that's the Seattle-Healthrow leg) but might they get creative and find a way to get some of the US travelers into some part of Europe that is open?

I suppose they have bunches of planes in places where they can't get off the ground ... but aren't some of their planes at the other end of the line (e.g., SEATAC)?

I know, not too practical to think they'd do that kind of 'creative juggling' for the small number of bookings this would work for ... but one can hope!

Yeah, I think that is really unlikely that will happen. I'm sure the Spain airports are already chock full of international flights during normal times. They don't have the capacity to accept tons of other flights.

Keri, unfortunately, airlines can't just decide where they want to go at the last minute. Every major airport has landing/gate slots that are purchased by the airlines way in advance. Otherwise, every airline would be heading for Spain and he airports couldnt' handle it.

What you might want to do is get on the phone with BA, explain that your final destination is actually Istanbul and see if they can re-route you on a partner airline so you bypass Heathrow.

As an example, Iberia is now a partner of BA. See if they can reroute you via Madrid to Istanbul?

I got the call yesterday that my flight was canceled. My options were: fly on Wednesday (hopefully the cloud will clear by then)... and that was just about it. I looked into getting a flight into Spain, but nothing was available. The few remaining European airports taking flights from the US are overbooked right now.

Judey, I am so sorry to hear of this. I know how excited you were and how hard you worked on this trip. I hope you can work something out for Wednesday.

I flew out of SeaTac over the weekend (domestic flight, no issues) and saw the Lufthansa and Air France planes parked way off to the side, far beyond the N terminal, looking very lonely. I assume the BA 747 was somewhere too, but I didn't look in time to see it.

But I would assume, like Frank II said, that BA 0048 can't fly anywhere but LHR, even tho' the plane is sitting here.

Thanks, Lola. After calling Air France numerous times (the only way we could find to attempt to reschedule) with no response forthcoming (we waited on hold for 2 1/2 hours yesterday), we have decided to cancel our trip. Since we bought our plane tickets through a travel agent she is going to deal with getting our refund, thankfully. We didn't want to miss any of our trip and no one, not even my travel agent, has any idea how long we would need to wait before actually flying. Her guess was 1-2 weeks after flight AF 309 started operating again.

We hope to reschedule for the fall if it is possible for us to go then. Crossing our fingers!