What Are Your Rights When Your Flight Is Canceled?

A nationwide ground stop Friday that temporarily halted all new flight traffic in the United States for over four hours has stranded passengers on thousands of flights due to delays or cancellations. But federal rules don’t provide many avenues to alleviate your misery.

If your flight is canceled, airlines will attempt to rebook you to the next available flight. But airline flight schedules are a delicately managed dance, and any one delay can reverberate through the system. A nationwide ground stop — which, after Friday, had only occurred twice since Sept. 11, 2001 — is even more disruptive.

More than 2,000 flights in the United States have been canceled so far Saturday, in addition to some 9,000 on Friday, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.

For domestic flights in the United States, there is no requirement for airlines to compensate you if your flight is canceled or delayed. Individual airlines have made voluntary commitments to provide passengers with vouchers, meals or other compensation — but only in the case of a cancellation or delay that is within the airline’s control.

Airlines, however, are required to refund your ticket if your flight is canceled and you choose not to fly.

A Transportation Department news briefing Saturday morning about the nationwide ground stop a day earlier was derailed by tech issues.

“I just want to first start off by extending my gratitude for what happened yesterday and the amazing performance of our air traffic controllers,” Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said, as thousands of flights were canceled Saturday after the ground stop was lifted. Duffy stopped amid what appeared to be microphone feedback.

Duffy attempted to continue but then stopped again. “Oh, this is not operational?” he asked. “This is our kind of, um, day.”

A few minutes later, the briefing live stream began again. Duffy appeared to test the microphone. “Check, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,” he said, as a team worked to help fix the issues, and the briefing resumed.

Canada and the United States are “making progress” toward a trade deal, although “we’re not yet there,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said Saturday.

“I had quite a long, substantive conversation with President Trump just before leaving for this trip,” Carney, who is in the Philippines ahead of an association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit, told reporters.

“There is the possibility of a deal, a bilateral deal. But we’re not yet there,” he said.

Canada-U.S. trade talks collapsed in August, with Trump announcing 50 percent tariffs on some Canadian goods, and Carney vowing to retaliate “dollar for dollar.”

Since then, Canada has been aggressively seeking new trading partners. The U.S. is Canada’s largest trading partner by far — 72 percent of Canadian exports in 2025 went to the United States.

Carney announced Saturday he had substantially concluded free-trade negotiations with ASEAN — which represents 11 countries and about 700 million people — and completed a separate set of free trade negotiations with the Philippines.

These were part of Canada’s strategy to create a “dense web of reliable partners” and reduce its “relative reliance on the United States,” he added.

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Despite objections from Justice Department lawyers, a federal judge said Friday that an inquiry into the conduct of Trump administration lawyers in the East Potomac Golf Links case would proceed — either through a special master or under the judge’s own supervision.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes identified Jessie K. Liu, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia during President Donald Trump’s first term, as a potential special master to examine whether government lawyers had complied with their ethical obligations in their handling of court-ordered notice requirements and explanations for tree-cutting work at East Potomac.

The government argued in a filing Thursday that no ethics inquiry was warranted and that Reyes could not appoint a special master without its consent. It said such appointments are reserved for narrow circumstances and that Reyes or a magistrate judge could handle any inquiry herself.

But the judge made clear Friday that the inquiry remained on the table and that she was also prepared to conduct the review herself if needed.

“The court doesn’t want to do this,” she said, “but I have an obligation to ensure that representations made to a federal court are made in good faith and consistent with ethical rules.”

Reyes did not decide Friday whether to appoint a special master but said she was taking the underlying concerns seriously.

Reyes is expected to rule Saturday on preservation groups’ emergency request to stop the Park Service from closing East Potomac and surrounding parkland after Sunday’s final rounds.

Here’s the dilemma: Our letter writer has a dog. Whenever she visits her hometown, this dog isn’t welcome at her parents’ house because her mother and father are admittedly not “dog people.” Our letter writer’s solution has been to stay over at her in-laws’ house instead, where her dog is free to roam at will. But what happens when she and her husband are expecting a baby? And her parents are demanding that she spend the night at their house with their new grandkid, sans dog?

Advice columnists Carolyn Hax and Shane O’Neill weighed this letter writer’s situation on this week’s episode of Life Hax, a new podcast about interpersonal dramas and how to navigate them. So what would they advise our dog owner, who’s feeling some resentment about her parents’ insistence?

“Just take all the reactivity and all the feelings out of it,” Carolyn said on the podcast. Make it instead “all about the logistics.”

But as Shane notes in his answer, that could be easier said than done...

To hear more from Shane and Carolyn, follow the Life Hax show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have your own question to ask, email LifeHax@washpost.com.

With so many new phones no longer shipping with power adapters, the easiest option can be using whatever power brick came with an older phone. But that’s also likely to be your slowest-charging option: The tiny white AC adapter that Apple shipped with iPhones for years delivers only 5 watts of power, ensuring that charging will be a leisurely experience.

The industry-wide switch to USB-C charging on phones, even Apple’s, and laptops — given a shove by European Union regulations mandating that standard — means you should instead use whatever charger came with your tablet or laptop. Those power-hungrier devices ship with more-powerful chargers: Apple’s new iPad Mini, for example, includes a 20 watt power brick, and the company’s laptops ship with charges ranging from 20 watts for the MacBook Neo to 140 watts for the largest MacBook Pro models.

(The newest iPhones, meanwhile, don’t ship with power adapters at all.)

Conversely, if you forget your laptop’s power adapter, a phone charger may be able to trickle-charge your laptop, as well. Plug it in and leave it for a while. The laptop’s charging light may stay off, but check its battery meter after an hour — it may just have enough charge.

Microsoft said Saturday that all its services affected by this week’s global outage have been restored.

The company said it had “completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions,” following a major outage of its email, meeting and other office tools that began Thursday afternoon.

Earlier the company had apologized, saying it was “deeply sorry for the disruption.” It said the outage was caused by a technical issue that emerged following an upgrade to its network, and was not related to AI or a cyberattack.

The global disruption affected communications at government services, hospitals, schools, police departments, courts and businesses. Some traders in Japan had to resort to using fax.

British lawmaker Chi Onwurah who chairs the U.K. government’s science, innovation and technology committee said the outage highlights the dangers dependency on U.S.-based technology providers “can pose to our security, economy and public services.”

Meanwhile, some workers used the opportunity of an unexpected switch-off to rest, and some organizations used it to promote their services, including the reliability of old-school letter writing.