Great advice, George, especially the part to know what your options are for other flights that get you where you need to be, as we have often found the rebooking agent will just automatically offer you a flight the next day on their airline, effectively scr*wing you out of a whole day of vacation. Many or most people just take whatever the agent offers.

A couple of years ago, we had our flight out of Tampa, going to Atlanta and then to ST. Maarten, cancelled. Delta offered us the same flight next day. No way, Jose!! We knew that US Air flew Tampa-Charlotte-SXM and we were able to get them to put us on that flight and we ended up landing in SXM before our original Delta connection would have!!