The Secret Thing You Can Do When Your Flight Is Cancelled

                             

Imagine our surprise as we walked off the plane in Vienna, Austria, looked at the connecting flight board and saw that our flight to Los Angeles was cancelled.
For a moment, we were stunned. Then we moved to action. Where should we go and how was the airline going to rebook 500 passengers? And after 3 weeks in Europe and 3 kids who were ready to go home, how were we going to convince them that this was just another part of the adventure?
"To the service center," the customer service representative told us and off we went with dozens of other passengers.
We took a number at the service center and sat down to wait. The lone customer service representative at the service counter called out a number. We could see this was going to take awhile. So we called Austrian Airlines customer service using Skype.  Skype allows you to make calls to any landline, cell or Skype for pennies anywhere in the world. I always leave a few bucks on my Skype account just in case. This is the secret!
The customer service representative on the phone was able to make a new reservation for us on the same flight the next day. He told us we still had to wait for our number to be called so we could get vouchers for the hotel, food and taxi and to retrieve our luggage and to get new boarding passes, but we had a confirmed reservation.
Success!
About an hour later, our number was called. The customer service representative told us immediately that there no flights available until the following afternoon. Then she looked up our tickets and smiled.
She said "Actually I see you are already booked on the 7am flight. Good job!"
She handed us vouchers for our hotel, food and taxi and directed us to baggage claim. "Enjoy Vienna," she told us.

Hipster hotel in Vienna, Austria

Within an hour, we were sitting in a hipster hotel in Vienna enjoying our lunch courtesy of Austrian Airlines.