How I got $2,900 of expenses covered after the 737 MAX 9 grounding stranded me in Hawaii

24.01.2024 - 13:49 / thepointsguy.com

Even with all our travel savvy, the experts at The Points Guy and our team of intrepid contributors are occasionally thrown a curve ball ... in this case, by the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX 9.

Alesandra Dubin was stranded in Hawaii (the horror!) by the 737 MAX 9 groundings. And while she was lucky enough to wait it out at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea until she could rebook her family on alternative flights, it was still a potentially costly ordeal.

Here's what she had to do to get her family home ... and then get compensation for her out-of-pocket expenses with the help of our ombudsman, Michelle Couch-Friedman.

— Eric Rosen

Like Gilligan's three-hour tour, ours was supposed to be a short but sweet adventure. I had traveled with my husband and our 9-year-old-twins to Hawaii, where we spent five days at the Four Seasons Resort Lanai horseback riding, swimming, trying our hands at archery, playing shuffleboard over cocktails (for the adults) and milkshakes (for the kids) — even stargazing at the on-site planetarium. By all measures, it was the perfect family vacation, an ideal last hurrah before we'd return to the rigors of work and a new semester of fourth grade.

The first sign that we'd be deviating from the plan came in the early morning hours of Jan. 6, when I was sleeplessly scrolling various notifications on my phone and saw the news that there'd been a midair incident on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 jet. We were scheduled to fly home from Maui's Kahului Airport (OGG) to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) the next day on the very same airline and aircraft type.

As news of the grounding of the 737 MAX 9 kept rolling in throughout the day, we made what later revealed itself to be a strategic blunder: Instead of immediately seeking a different solution, we checked in for our flight as normal, 24 hours ahead of scheduled departure, and we waited. We packed and got ready to go.

However, the airline canceled our flight later that day. It alerted us to the cancellation with an email that did not offer any viable solutions for getting home. It read:

The email asked passengers to look for new flights and rebook directly on Alaska's website, cancel their tickets for a refund, place the value of the ticket in an Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan Wallet for future use, or call customer service to discuss their options.

I decided not to cancel right away but to simply hold on to the existing tickets while I checked for alternative flights on other airlines. At that time, it seemed feasible — even likely — that Alaska would sort out the issue and get us headed home late on another flight without me having to cancel our original booking.

By this point, the few available flights on other airlines