MilesTalk

Nervous about the NY storm that we are scheduled to fly into tomorrow to get home.

Plat Medallion. Traveling with an infant on separate PNR so even more nervous.

Old enough to remember being able to be ‘protected’ on the next day’s flight. Supervisor said that doesn’t exist anymore. Offered to just move us now but our travel insurance won’t cover a voluntary change and our hotel is $$$$.

There are plenty of seats on the next day’s flight but not enough for everyone.

Would DeltaMatic rebook based on status? Infant in second PNR - issue?

I’m tempted to just book the following day’s flight now with miles (current flight is miles anyway) and cancel if ours is fine. Essentially protection, just on my own.

What would FlyerTalk do?

sydneyracquelle

CYA and use miles to protect yourself and infant tomorrow at zero cost. Don’t forget to cancel one of them before departure.

flightline87

Yes, last month, I got protected on the first flight the next morning from DTW to LAX when it looked like I might (and eventually did) miss the last flight out that night given a delayed inbound (wx-related). I was in paid F as a DM so not sure how much that mattered, but process worked well.

MilesTalk

Good to know but I guess in your case IRROPS officially kicked in with that delayed inbound.

For me, as of this second, it just “looks bad’ given 10 inches of snow expected before we’d land (and the plane coming here probably not taking off to come down) but nothing has actually happened yet.

findark

AFAIK, no carrier has ever protected someone for an on-time flight just because it might get delayed. Protection is normally offered when you are already delayed past MCT but still want to try to run for it.

skislc

I've had success getting protected on backup plans once something was already going wrong (e.g. last spring SLC-MIA had a MX delay and then the crew timed out, so I was able to get the plat line to protect us on SLC-FLL while the MIA flight got sorted out) but as long as everything looks good in their systems it's going to be a hard sell to get an agent to back you up preemptively (though if you want to preemptively change, different story - I've gotten everything reasonable I've asked for and some things I didn't think were so reasonable but were worth a shot... in fact, not sure I've ever had an agent tell me no when IROPS or a waiver were involved).

jrl767

suuuuuuuuure you're not

xliioper

I was autoprotected a couple months ago on a later LAX-DTW flight coming off AKL-LAX. Flight was not delayed, but was right at 1h30m MCT after a schedule change and DL had a warning on website that I might not make connection.

exwannabe

OP, if it helps you relax a bit, I am seeing fairly modest predicted snow amounts for JFK. 1-3 inches. (I am flying in and back out on split tickets so watching carefully).

LGA and HPN will be worse though. Maybe a lot worse.

sydneyracquelle

Mind my ignorance but I’ve ubered between LGA and JFK in 15-20 minutes. How can JFK be ok and LGA be worse?

skislc

JFK's on the southern end of the island and LGA on the north - in storms with tight gradients/temps the marine layer can keep JFK just warm enough to be rain while LGA gets substantial snow.

FWIW models here are all over the place - forecasters are going to have quite the headache getting it right/expect lots of variance. Model spread for BDL is a couple inches all the way to a foot plus, NYC is a bit more locked in for a meaningful storm but some of the models even have them on the northern fringe.

exwannabe

In addition to what Salt Lake Skier said, LGA has seriously constrained runways.

MilesTalk

Fingers are crossed. I guess that is why they are still selling flights in and out of JFK even now.

Would be more than happy to get home as planned (though we then have to drive home to where it looks closer to 10 inches!) but worst case is Delta waits until we check out and bring our 2 year old to the airport - and THEN cancel. Trying not to ponder that. Especially when the storm is first starting early morning.

tardyturtle

MilesTalk, Delta has issued a travel advisory, allowing you to re-book for free. Good luck!

jamesteroh

They aren't going to protect you untiul the flight is delayed.

They'll probably have a weather waiver anyway and allow you to change your flight for free. If the weather is that bad, you'd probably be better of taking a later flight than going to the airport and dealing with delays and a possible conacelled flight with an infant.

Last time I ran into that situation was about a year ago with storms at ORD. The diamond desk protected me on a flight the next day (and glad they did because Delta ended up cancelling all the flights the rest of the night). There were others in the club asking the skyclub agent to protect them and she said they could only protect diamonds and 360s and others would have to be standby.

Sounds like it is a diamond/360 benefit now, which makes sense.

If you are PM, you should be pretty high up on the standby list if there are plenty of seats and only diamonds and 360s are protected.

Is the infant in their own seat? Only way that would cause a problem is if you are next in line fo clear and there is only one seat available, agent may skip over you and give it to next solo traveller and you'll likely not be able to get adjacent seats.

I would do waht someone else said and just book the last flight of the day out tomorrow on miles and cancel if you have to and get the miels back. At least you'll have a seat guaranteed