One of the biggest concerns or hesitations for people to travel, especially internationally, is dealing with the “what ifs” of things going wrong. The most common anxiety comes from the transportation elements of a trip. We have dealt with our fair share of flight delays and cancellations, but on our way to Italy in 2023 we dealt with our first time getting stuck in another city during a layover. 

The best thing you can do to prepare for these “what if” scenarios is to have the knowledge on what you can do to make the situation easier. Here is a walk through of our experience and my recommendations of what to do if you are caught in this scenario. 

We planned to fly out of Minneapolis around 5pm and fly overnight to Paris for a 2hr layover before connecting to Rome. Unfortunately, our flight out of Minneapolis was delayed by an hour, causing many people to question the airline staff about connections. The airline staff assured everyone that if you were going to miss your connection, the airline would automatically reschedule you on the next flight

TIP #1: Always be an advocate for yourself. In this situation you should 1) consider if you want to call the support line and see if you can proactively move to a later flight and 2) know what the reason is for the delay as that may affect trip insurance/compensation rules. 

We took off and I kept checking the time and my email to get our reschedule, and of course it didn’t come. We landed with 30min to get through customs and to our gate….not gonna happen. Customs took over an hour and by the time we got to the gate, the plane was of course gone and the airline desk line was extremely long.

TIP #2:  As soon as you know you are going to miss the connection and it seems like most passengers on your flight are in the same boat, try calling the airline support phone number rather than wait in line. 

As soon as I saw the long line, I called the support number and only waiting a couple minutes to talk to someone. As he was speaking, flights for that day were quickly getting booked up but he was able to get us on a flight the following day. I can guarantee you that if we had waited in the line, we likely wouldn’t have been on a flight for 2+ days. This process took 15min vs. 1+ hour waiting in line.

The next step step was figuring out what to do for the night. We were tired, stressed out, and now I had the daunting job of figuring out where we could stay for the night. I knew that not only would availability be limited and prices expensive, but that most European hotels accommodated only 3 people in one room.

TIP #3: For last minute hotel bookings, especially when traveling as a family, I quickly narrowed my search by looking at American hotel chains. The reason for this is 1) the chains usually have a standard that you can expect in regards to service, quality and cleanliness 2) they likely have room options for families of 4 and 3) they are usually bigger so would have better luck with availability. 

We selected a Renaissance in an area I knew was nice and was able to easily book on my Marriot app. It did come with a high-price tag, $800+ for the night, but I needed to know we had a nice place to settle and I knew I had trip insurance that would cover the cost. 

The last thing I did was send a chat to Delta about the missed connection, and while they legally didn’t have to provide anything since the flight didn’t fall under European regulations for compensation, they offered me a $100 Delta credit (since I was Silver member) and each of my family members a $75 Delta credit. 

TIP #4: Know your coverage for situations like this! I am a huge advocate for trip insurance, as in this scenario we ended up getting fully refunded for our Paris hotel. For flight compensation, if you are on a European airline or flying out of Europe, they have compensation laws. But if you are on a US airline flying out of the US, it doesn’t hurt to ask them for compensation – this is where knowing if delays were an airline issue or weather is really helpful.

Luckily, we had carry-ons only because we knew the airport workers in Italy were going on strike when we landed, so we knew there was a risk of our flights getting disrupted or issues receiving our bags. If we hadn’t done that, there is a chance our bags could have been transferred onto our connection flight without us and that would have made a stressful situation even worse. 

TIP #5: If you know you have a quick connection or there are other reasons why you could have a high chance of delay, consider doing carry-on only. There are ways to look at the trends for flight delays which can help you. 

We quickly hopped into a taxi and headed to our hotel. Finally, as soon as we got to our room, I contacted the transportation and tour excursions that we had booked that I knew we would miss.

TIP #6: Before a big trip, I recommend having a print out where you have all the lodging and vendor contact information so you can easily contact them for any situation that arise. 

While it was an extremely stressful situation, because I had already known these tips it made me feel more empowered and less concerned about what was going to happen. I knew what actions to take and how to prioritize. 

Hopefully you won’t have situations like this, but just know that if it happens, make the best of it! In our case, it meant we had a night to explore Paris with our kids and the next day we made it to Rome with no issues.