Central Florida couple drives 2K miles home after struggles to rebook canceled flight

By Anika Hope

Click here for updates on this story

    ORLANDO, Florida (WESH) — Everything about the trip out to Arizona from Orlando seemed almost too perfect to Sierra Rodriguez and Daniel McCartin. The couple lives in Hunter’s Creek.

“I was meeting his family. And my birthday is on Christmas as well. So his family does like a huge, you know, Italian celebration for like days on end,” Rodriguez said.

It was clear the celebration was over when they arrived at the airport in Phoenix.

“Everybody’s in havoc, like it was a catastrophe. There are people, you hear them, on the phone, kind of like, ‘what am I going to do?'” Rodriguez said.

Their Southwest flight back to Central Florida was also canceled.

“They kept reiterating, like how little they can do at the airport for you. To just go home. And the problem with that was, anybody you would ask, were like, ‘oh, well, we don’t really have a clue when everything’s gonna be back up,'” Rodriguez said.

“We looked at other flights and flights were like two grand each ticket. And a lot of them had connecting flights too,” McCartin said.

So with no way to fly, no idea when they could, and pets waiting at home, Rodriguez and McCartin decided they would have to rent a car and drive. The drive would be over 2,100 miles across the country.

“I was like, this is our only choice right now,” Rodriguez said.

They got their car, although rentals were scarce.

“It was a long drive. A long drive,” Rodriguez said.

“Thirty, 29 to 31 hours, depending on traffic. For us, it took about two days. We had to stay a couple of nights,” McCartin said.

Some of the hotels they first stopped at were booked up. And they saw plenty of other families doing the same thing.

“It was families of four or five, and you’d see them out at the gas stations. And you knew that they had been canceled too. And they did the same route and ended up driving,” McCartin said.

Thirty hours of driving later, they’re back, thankful to just be home.

“We talked about it probably 20 times on the drive … just knowing the struggle that other people were going through. Like we got very lucky,” Rodriguez said.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.