My wife and I had an MCO-DTW-LGW segment booked in economy class on Tuesday, February 26. This was the day of power outages in South Florida that caused blackouts in some parts of Central Florida as well. Additionally, snow storms were in the Detroit area causing flight delays. The plane arrived in Orlando late and delayed the departure of the outgoing plane.

Itinerary information was as follows:

Scheduled MCO departure was 3:44pm, actual departure from the gate was 5:20pm, actual takeoff was 7:15pm.

Scheduled DTW arrival was 6:32pm, actual arrival was 9:20pm

Scheduled LGW departure was 9:25pm, actual departure was 9:21pm.

By the time the plane was boarded, thunderstorms were beginning to move into the Orlando area. The pilot decided to pull away from the gate and get in the queue. According to the pilot, planes were being allowed to take off by heading towards Tampa and near the Gulf of Mexico, however, our aircraft was not equipped with a raft, and thus was stuck in the queue until the thunderstorms passed. After waiting on the tarmac for almost 2 hours we were finally airborne. Needless to stay, the flight arrived late in Detroit and docked at gate A70. I called the flight status line as soon as we were on the ground and discovered that our connecting flight to London Gatwick was still on schedule and departing from gate A50.

My wife and I sprinted to A50 only to find no NWA agent at the gate and the security door closed. Although, the plane had still not left the gate. We inquired at an adjacent gate and the agent stated that the doors could not be reopened. I called the flight status 800 number and discovered that the flight departed 4 minutes early. We were surprised that NWA agents did not hold the plane since I'm sure they had access to our arrival information, but I guess NWA values on-time departures more than customer care.

We then went to the customer service center and after waiting for about 40 minutes we found out that the next flight from DTW to LGW was 24 hours later. I had the agent search different airports and airlines for possible earlier arrival in London (any airport), but it seemed that all of the flights were overnight. So, we reluctantly accepted the same flight 24 hours later and received no lodging voucher or compensation for our trouble. We had prepaid for our hotel in London and it was non-refundable, so we were forced to pay for one unused night there as well as one night at a Detroit hotel. Since the delay was most likely entered as weather related, do we have any recourse?

Since returning from our trip a couple days ago, I have not yet contacted NWA regarding this issue. If anyone can recommend a course of action to take that may result in some type of compensation in the form of either vouchers or miles, it would be extremely appreciated.

Thanks.