When Does It Make Sense to Cancel a Flight and Just Drive?

by Anthony Losanno
Silver Airways Cancel

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We’re on a little staycation this weekend in Fort Lauderdale. We flew in last night and will head back to Tampa tomorrow night. Our flight on Silver Airways is delayed tomorrow by over two hours, already. The flight is less than an hour (coming over it clocked in at 36 minutes) and the drive is around four hours. With the delay hitting over 36 hours in advance and likely going to get worse, we extended the rental car and are making the drive back to Tampa tomorrow.

Silver Airways Delay

I received an email at 9:03 AM this morning alerting me that my flight from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) to Tampa International Airport (TPA) was delayed. I checked other flight times and found that those were also delayed. I could fly Spirit back or go to Miami International Airport (MIA) to fly on American Airlines, but it’s just not worth it.

Cadillac XT5

I rented a car from Avis and was pleasantly surprised to see that changing the drop-off location to Tampa as well as making it three hours later only added $89 to the rental car cost. I thought that this was quite the deal.

Silver Airways Flight Delay

Unfortunately, it looks like this is quite common for Silver Airways and I think I’m going to have to swear them off for future travel. The airline refunded our tickets without question.

Anthony’s Take: Thankfully, we were supposed to fly home from somewhere within driving distance. In this case, it makes sense to drive versus gamble with this flight or another one.

(Image Credits: Silver Airways and Cadillac.)

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2 comments

CHRIS May 11, 2024 - 7:46 pm

Silver.

Reply
NedsKid May 12, 2024 - 7:56 pm

I’ve had some very bad experiences with them within Florida. They also start/stop flying places at drop of a hat. One time was supposed to connect on to them in MCO going to Gainesville… they delayed the flight 8 hours. I mean… who is going to wait on that? Mechanical reasons. They also did not want to even give a refund. (same story when I had a Key West to FLL flight on them delay 4 hours and I just used a mileage ticket on AA to get out on the last flight of the day… the station manager at EYW told me “good luck, they don’t like giving refunds.”). I at least had a former coworker who was that station manager’s boss (at the time) who was able to intervene.

They owe quite a bit of money to a number of airports.

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