Yes, thank you for the good wishes and sympathy.

It’s exactly true: auto rebooking which BA’s phone line and their personnel at JFK (after we decamped to baggage reclaim) suggested to me could only offer a flight on December 26th. I knew that the system doesn’t show complex routings, let alone other airlines, and I’m a seasoned user of ExpertFlyer to check flight availability and fare buckets. Without that knowledge, we’d have missed a whole week of our trip (if we were lucky).

Our seven year old behaved impeccably — not a peep throughout the whole ordeal until after we needed to wake them up after they’d been sleeping on the cold concrete floor of JFK T8 domestic baggage reclaim from 3am to 6am while we sorted out the rebooking on the phone.

I also discovered a delight of JFK at night — they play very loud unpleasant music in the domestic baggage claim area. I couldn’t work out why until I noticed the stern official signs nearby warning people that “no loitering” was allowed. That made me realize the music isn’t to please the staff, employees or the passengers. It’s to make the area intolerable for any homeless or impecunious folk who might consider bedding down in a quiet corner. You can see a similar phenomenon at the JFK Jamaica AirTrain station where next to all the “no trespassing” signs there is a phalanx of metal gates and barricades filling up a large area of floor space, whose purpose must be nothing other than to prevent homeless New Yorkers occupying said floor.

Alas, nobody thinks of providing any actual social services… but I risk digressing into politics on that. In any case, this situation makes the environment much more unpleasant for paying customers whatever its aims or effects on anyone else.