TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – The airline watchdog site FlightAware tracked more than 100 canceled or delayed flights at Tampa International Airport on Friday.
Suzanne Pendleton and her husband had their flight to Denver canceled.
“We are supposed to be caring for our grandchildren. We have an infant and a two-year-old and they’re counting on us to be there,” Pendleton said.
Dara Omahony and his family are depending on a series of flights to get home to Ireland.
“We’ve just come from Clearwater and we are due to fly back to Ireland and so we have a flight from here to Boston and then from Boston we are due to go to Dublin, but our flight now to Boston, we believe due to weather which is canceled or delayed until 3:00, which means we won’t get our second flight. The best-case scenario is we are going to be three hours later because there is another flight a little later on. The worst-case scenario is we are here another day and the kids might miss a little bit of school,” Omahony said.
Lori Judd is a travel professional with Prestige Travel Vacations and says people should reconsider using a travel agent.
“You can mitigate some of that difficulty by using a travel advisor to help mitigate the stress and changes and changing travel restrictions, because that’s what we do, we have to keep up with all of that,” said Judd who is also strongly urging people to purchase travel insurance before they go.
“That is going to help you, provide you with a different flight if that does happen, if you don’t have trip insurance then you are at the mercy of the airlines,” said Judd.
