SAN ANTONIO — The crash of the Southwest Airlines system has created a cascade effect in other places as stranded travelers have to book last minute hotel rooms and spend money on unexpected expenses.
For those who can't afford to seek shelter at pricey hotels, they're sleeping sitting up in unforgiving airport seating, or worse.
One woman trying to get to Boston said “We originally thought, best bet, sleep in our car tonight, before our flight tomorrow.” The challenge? Her flight leaves from New Orleans and she has to get there first.
“We’re kind of just winging it, just trying to get back within the next 24 hours depending on how long it takes to get a car just to get there and then drive to New Orleans,” she mused.
For this traveler and almost everyone the upheaval is a budget buster.
She said “The cheapest way to get back from here would have been about $1200 to $1500 a ticket so we tried to at least get a car.”
Jacob Bennett thought he was going to do a touch and go in San Antonio after flying here to drop his daughter off. He thought it would be easy enough, as a solo traveler, to squeeze into a seat.
Bennett said “I got a cancellation yesterday before I flew out but I thought I would get standby. I couldn’t so now I’m renting a car and driving home to Phoenix, yeah.”
Michelle Bauman who came to San Antonio to escape the cold up north, said everything went smoothly until they arrived.
“The flight was fine. We flew United. But now we get here and the rental car line we’ve been waiting for about an hour. We might spend longer in line waiting for the rental car then we were on the flight from Chicago, yes!” Bauman said.
Ashley Swendsen said she’s just trying to get to the beach, but at the one hour mark in line, she said she still had a ways to go to pick up her rental car.
Swendsen chuckled “Yes. It’s an excellent test of patience!”