A family's three-hour flight from Belize to Montreal turned into a 40-hour nightmare involving seven hours waiting in line, phantom charges, and ultimately abandoning their rebooked flight to buy new tickets out of pocket.
"We got back from Belize to Miami," the traveler writes in a detailed account on r/travel. "We had a 1h45 min connection in Miami to catch a flight to go to Montreal."
It went downhill from there.
Their Belize departure was delayed an hour, making the connection tighter. When they landed in Miami and ran to their gate, they found their Montreal flight was also delayed—initially a relief. But the delays kept extending: 30 minutes, then another 30, then another.
Finally, around 9 PM, the flight was cancelled entirely. The scheduled 7:45 PM departure had turned into a cancellation after two hours of delays.
When mass cancellations overwhelm airport systems
The gate agent directed them to customer service to rebook. What they found: "the longest line I've ever seen." They waited seven hours. All flights in Miami had been cancelled—presumably weather-related, though the post doesn't specify.
By 3:30 AM, they finally reached the counter. The agent rebooked them on a flight leaving from Fort Lauderdale at 8:15 AM—requiring a $100 Uber to get there.
Exhausted and with just hours until the new flight, they headed to Fort Lauderdale around 4:30 AM.
The phantom charge and the final straw
