comment: >
  
  
  I can't possibly speak for every airline or situation, but the fastest ways are if you notice right when your flight cancels and finding the first agent you can speak to.
  
  I was fortunate enough to already be home, so all I had available was internet & phone. I do feel like my options might have been improved if I'd been at the airport, but I also feel like it would have been chaos. In my case, I was flying out the 23rd and returning the 26th, so adding even a day's delay to my flight out was gonna be too much.
  
  If you are not at the airport or all the lines are already full, most regular customers are already on the phone or know how to change their flight quickly through the online system.
  
  I tried to look online, but all the flights were already booked. Probably because my flight was one of the later ones canceled, as well. I don't know if there were any sort of tricks I could have used. I did find some first class seats available, but Alaska wasn't going to cover the additional price for those.
context: Please everyone, just remember if someone freaks out at the airport to film it horizontally and to keep the subject in frame. >
  
  Yea. I bet there is a few people that are going to be spending the night in jail after freaking the fuck out that their christmas will be ruined. >
  
  I will never understand people who get so fucking worked when an annual holiday isn’t perfect.  Like, my dad’s in the fucking hospital.  He’s going to be through Christmas.  And, well, that sucks, but it’s also just one particular day, he’s enjoyed 74 of them and counting, and if this one isn’t a god damn Hallmark special, he’s not too butthurt about that and neither is anyone else.  He’s mostly just glad to be alive.  So yes, it’s a bummer for those whose plans aren’t working out, but can we be adults about this? >
  
  Overworked, overburdened, overstrained, inflation-addled working parents with 3 children (two have RSV, maskless) driving erratically through town in a Bad Decisions Mobile, on which they owe tens of thousands of dollars, and that they're paying $370 for in monthly insurance premiums (state minimums only), their entire lives ONE second away from completely unraveling, BARELY holding it together through the rest of the year by getting excited for the holiday season, where they can watch social media celebrities' "tastefully" and "thoughtfully" put together Christmas-inspired decorations, outfits or food. 
  Because bad decisions is all they've ever known, and because they've been holding it together all year in anticipation of their Christmas time off vacation, they join the millions of Americans attempting to take air travel in a narrow, narrow window of peak season craziness right as an intense storm shuts everything down throughout the country. 
  Do you think these overstressed, credit-addled, inflation-ridden barely-making-ends-meet parents with multiple coughing, sick and expensive young children running around screaming will just smile and say, "understandable, I'll just wait here quietly for 13 hours" as their only vacation (the one they had put all their faith in to be that perfect Hallmark winter wonderland Christmas story) slowly evaporates in front of their eyes?
  I'm impressed we don't see MORE people melting down and losing their cool >
  
  As a flight attendant, when something goes wrong during a time period like this, good luck with 13 hours. If everything begins cancelling, any open seats over the next couple days get instantly filled by the people who know and are quick to make the switch. People like your theoretical scenario? They're almost certainly not going to make it for any point in the weekend. >
  
  
  any open seats over the next couple days get instantly filled by the people who know and are quick to make the switch.
  
  I wish I knew how to get in the know. I don't know any of the rules, this was my first cancellation. I just canceled both of my flights, it was way too hard to figure out how to transfer flights without getting ripped off. >
  
  I can't possibly speak for every airline or situation, but the fastest ways are if you notice right when your flight cancels and finding the first agent you can speak to. All normal agents have the same power and access. Many people tend to go to the closest agent and this leaves long lines nearby.
  If you are not at the airport or all the lines are already full, most regular customers are already on the phone or know how to change their flight quickly through the online system. At the end of the day, the sooner you can talk to someone, the better.