What do you do when your evening flight is canceled, you really need to be somewhere in the morning and there are no other available flights?
Well, if you are 13 total strangers in Orlando, Florida late Sunday, you hire a minivan, form an impromptu community and go on a "crazy" road trip taking hundreds of thousands of TikTok viewers along for the ride.
It was Sunday night at Orlando International Airport in Florida. An evening Frontier Airlines flight to Knoxville, Tennessee had just been canceled. Stranded passengers were searching on their cell phones for other flights and lined up to speak to stressed airport staff.
Michelle Miller was set to present at a conference in Knoxville on Tuesday. Carlos and Laura were taking their 17-year-old daughter to tour the University of Tennessee. One passenger was heading to a custody battle. Someone else was helping a friend move to Mexico. Others just wanted to get home.
The travelers were from all over the US and beyond. They had one thing in common: their flight got canceled, and they wanted to travel that evening.
When the idea first started brewing to hire a van and drive overnight to Knoxville, at first, it sounded exhausting.
But when faced with the alternative of missing all those important moments, the idea suddenly took off and the 13 strangers came together to drive a van from Orlando, Florida to Knoxville, Tennessee when their flight was canceled.
In the end, 13 stranded passengers joined the unexpected road trip and made friendships to last a lifetime.
Catch Stacey & Mike's Happy News every weekday morning at 6:40 on K103.