All flights across the entire United States were grounded Wednesday morning due to an overnight outage to the system that provides flight safety information to the crew.
The Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system inexplicably failed causing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to ground all domestic flights and all inbound international flights to be delayed or canceled Wednesday morning.
More than 1,200 flights were grounded causing a significant impact to cruisers attempting to reach a port for embarkation or fly home after debarkation. This is just the latest fiasco for airlines in the past month.
Carnival Cruise Line Ambassador, John Heald, had this to say about the flight cancellations and delays, “I’m so sorry, I hope they get this fixed and you get to join your flight and make your cruise.”
Unfortunately, cruise lines are unable to hold ships or change departure dates due to flight problems of cruisers. Cruise lines face significant fines from the port for being docked past their departure time as well as late embarkations could cause itinerary problems throughout the cruise.
It is always best practice to purchase good travel insurance with a reimbursement policy for flight issues or missed cruises. It is also good practice to fly in a day or two early in case there are flight issues. Also, if you booked your flight through the cruise line, they can always assist in rebooking flights to either reach the ship on time or catch up with the ship at the nearest port of call.
Best advice, before you cruise, get the insurance!