AIBU to rethink old friends after they reacted badly to delayed flight and prioritising my family?

Sorry I think events now have shown you it is time to consider your own actions. The flight was delayed - it was at this point you should have thought it was right to cancel. A four year old going to dinner after a 14 hour flight? That’s nonsense.

Your friends were there with you intending to get a car but somehow you had arranged it and communicated with your parents to pick you up. So everyone is bending backwards for you and then you let people down.

And then your response in the group when they are rightly annoyed is high-handed and you come with some degrading nonsense about ‘family first’. Huh?

You also say this is a pattern and you’re unreliable. You got this completely wrong, own that and apologize.

I think this was badly planned all round but yes, YABU. You should just have put your big girl pants on and gone to the event for a few hours. You’ve got 2 weeks to catch up on rest. Especially if you’re unreliable generally. Sounds like this is the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

Think they are rethinking you , as you change things last minute. They might have understood better had you messaged during your delay.

You should have realised when you missed the connection that the best thing to do was cancel. Did you miss the connection because your plane was late or you failed to move fast enough? With a young child a tight connection was always unwise.

Saying you were prioritising family adds insult to injury.

You made a series of poor decisions - booking a flight with inadequate transfer time and then thinking you would still be up for a night out direct from the airport after a mammoth journey. But that’s not the core issue here, it’s your communication. You should have made a call to postpone as soon as your flight was pushed back 24 hours, but even then if you hadn’t and cancelled at the last minute said something like “I am so sorry to let you guys down, but I am absolutely shattered after being delayed and just cannot make it straight from the airport. I know it’s probably too late to reschedule a full get together, but I try to catch up with as many of you as I can when I am here. Apologies for the inconvenience !” instead of your nonsense about prioritising family.
It seems you like to be the victim in these scenarios and your less flaky friends have had enough.

Also your OP should read "AIBU to be annoyed my friends finally called me out on being a flake?"

Well this was probably the final straw then

OP: They accused me of ruining their plans and being flaky and unreliable

Also OP: unfortunately yes im not known to be reliable

What exactly are you surprised about OP?

Also also this talk of priority is seeing grandparents and family come first. It sounds like you often make plans then decide something else is more important which is simply rude. You should apologise to your friends and tell them you understand why they're annoyed. Your time is not valuable than other people's just because you have a child.

Rather than cancelling so late it’d be better, at that point, for you alone to have met the friends and your parents taken your DC.

you could ask James to add you back to the group chat you flounced from, apologise and try to meet up with whoever is available during the visit.

Absolutely. It sounds like the plan was always to inconvenience someone, either the friends by cancelling at the last minute or the parents by having them drive all the way to the airport, only to find OP in a taxi on her way to see her friends. From the update, this sound like a common occurrence too.

Well that explains it. They reached their limit.

They have had enough of you . As we get older we decide not to pursue friendships that are hard work .

You were in the wrong as you confirmed the meeting would be fine then cancelled. And now trying to blame your friends for being annoyed. Have you got form for cancelling at the last minute.

On this occasion YANBU but it sounds like you have form which may explain their reaction.

You also should not have left the group, that was a massive overeaction.

It sounds like you’re the flakey friend and they’ve had enough of your shit. You should have rearranged straight away, no way would you have been good company after waiting around in an airport for a day with a young child…

You sound disorganised and thoughtless. As soon as you knew you were delayed for 24 hours, you should have made the decision to postpone plans to meet and let them know. Saying you needed to see your parents as a priority is an insult to friends who thought they had plans with you. At the very least, cancelling late, you should only have mentioned that you were too exhausted to meet up. In your friends' place I might have said nothing to your face, but I would have ranted behind your back.

So from their point of view this is the latest incident of many, which makes their reaction easier to understand and anticipate

You knew 24 hours ahead of the situation, that was the time to cancel not 15 minutes ahead of meeting

So this is the real issue, not simply cancelling because of the delayed flight then.

Well there's no need for them to be rude but if you're known to be unreliable I can see why they got frustrated. Similarly it wasn't thay you couldn't make it, yoh decided you were too tired at the last minute and wanted to prioritise other things, which doesn't sound great.

Fair play on owning that you're not reliable though.

Then this is likely to be the straw that broke the camel's back, which is why you got such a strong reaction. You can't keep messing people about, they get tired of it.

Oh well there’s your answer. Quite a big drip feed.

You were daft to tell them you’d go straight from the airport to the meet up. You should have told them in Frankfurt you were delayed by 24 hours.

But their response was also unreasonable.

Except that - if cancelling or not making meet ups is your standard behaviour then I can understand their frustration.

After such a long journey with all the delays it was bloody obvious you weren’t going to feel like going straight from the airport to the meet up, with a 4YO in tow. When was the last time you’d even showered? What was the plan for your luggage? Don’t frame it as prioritising family, that’s absolutely nothing to do with it. It was just silly to think you’d still make it. And what’s particularly bad is that you cancelled so late that they were presumably ready and on their way which is just really inconsiderate. As soon as you missed the connecting and had the new flight sorted you should have messaged to explain, cancelled and offered a few other dates to meet up instead during your 2 weeks stay. But sounds like the relationship is naturally waning if you live abroad, and if by your own admission you have form for being unreliable they probably just can’t be bothered with you any more.

😂

I decided to try a new airline with a very short connection

That’s where you lost me. This rarely ends well and usually any cost saving is offset by having to sleep in airports and having to hang around for 24hrs, so hardly ever worth it. It never ceases to amaze me how people, who choose short connections, then are up in arms or expect everyone to work around them when plans change due to timing issues, which invariably is the case.