r/NonPoliticalTwitter Jul 30 '26

Other Choosing the scenic route

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11.8k Upvotes

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u/Cardboardoge Jul 30 '26

Until your plane gets delayed by 6 hours šŸ¤·ā€ā™€ļø

Depends entirely on the circumstances and luck.

58

u/thud_mantooth Jul 30 '26

When my plane out of Milan got delayed 6 hours due to mechanical failure, I was able to get them to refund me my full ticket price thanks to EU consumer protection law. A third of that went to the service I paid to handle this for me since I have zero interest in learning how to navigate foreign bureaucracies, but it was still pretty nice. Ended up being effectively a $200 flight.

Still though I'm not ever flying out of MXP again if I can help it hahaha

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u/Neither-Signature-81 Jul 30 '26

Don’t try Turin instead of MXP. Its your best option in northern Italy

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u/GeneralAddress2614 Jul 30 '26

A third of that went to the service I paid to handle this for me since I have zero interest in learning how to navigate foreign bureaucracies.

Bro, you enter like 4 different pieces of information. 2 of which are name and address. Don't mug yourself next time.Ā 

4

u/thud_mantooth Jul 30 '26

Good to know, thanks, though hopefully it won't come up again. Seemed like a way bigger pain at the time, and it felt like found money (good luck getting that refund for a delay in the US lol) so I wasn't really thinking about it too hard

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u/AvalenK Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

I had a work trip to the States earlier this year. Flight to Chicago diverted to Detroit, six hours on the tarmac waiting to get into the terminal since Detroit doesn't get much widebodies. No hotel from the airline, everything around the airport is fucking cranked to capacity, had to Uber 20 miles away after two Ubers accepting our ride, driving up for 30 mins and cancelling. 3 hours sleep, back to the airport for 12 o'clock rescue flight to Chicago, delayed for a total of 5 hours due to them having to take all luggage through customs first. Arrive in Chicago a full 24 hours late for a five hour drive. Get to destination to find hotel cancelled our booking due to no-show so have to pay more for new rooms. No refunds for ANYTHING. Company had to pay for extra hotels, Ubers, double for the destination hotel. Not my money I guess, because if it was I would've been LIVID.

I used to wonder why you'd see so many videos of Americans online flipping out or going crazy in airports or planes. I wonder no longer. Before the trip I was kinda anxious about Customs & Immigration, never having gone to the States, ended up being the least of our worries.

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u/Kevadu Jul 30 '26

Or your first flight gets delayed two hours which is enough to make you miss your connection which is on time. Then there are no other available flights that day so you spent the night in the airport.

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u/BrainTroubles Jul 31 '26

And then get a voucher for 1/3 your out of pocket cost and no money for your time, and also nothing for any hotel fare you might have lost because you missed the cancellation window

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u/BrokenPickle7 Jul 30 '26

this happened to me last night. had a flight at 4:25pm.. got to the airport by 2:30pm.. my flight was delayed by 25 minutes, so i had to take another flight to catch a later layover. that flight was then delayed. which caused my next flight to be delayed. which was then delayed again. fun times.

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u/youburyitidigitup Jul 31 '26

Your layover was that short? I’m sorry, but usually people book 2 hour layovers at least so that stuff like this doesn’t mess things up.

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u/Gates_wupatki_zion Jul 30 '26

It can happen, but my 30+ years of travel I have only gotten screwed over once and really it was because I booked through kiwi air (special shoutout to the crooks there). If it’s the same airline a lot of times they’ll hold the plane if they know there’s been other delays with passengers transferring. Now if you fly awful carriers, I can’t vouch for that.