Weather travel. Fun times

[dougp26364]

Thanks to the winter weather, we’ve booked, cancelled and been rebooked by the airline 9 times in less than 24 hours. I thought I had it taken care of last night when I saw our outbound flight had arrived and we were the first flight of the day. But no. That flight was cancelled within 40 minutes of us getting up and getting ready to head to the airport. Sitting here at the airport I’ve rebooked their automated re-booking twice. American seems determined to
Kick us out of our first class seats and stick us with the least desirable routing.
I understand weather delays. But going from
Row 1A and row 1C to row 36 back by the toilets was a really big downgrade. Currently we booked so that we have to overnight before traveling on to our final destination. So far I’ve managed to outmaneuver AA’s automated system and have kept our first class seats, but we haven’t departed on our first leg yet.

 

[WinniWoman]

Best of luck. So frustrating.

I hate flying altogether and no longer will do it, but in the past I refused to ever fly in the winter, nor leave our home for a long period of time in winter. Too many things could go wrong.

 

[WaikikiFirst]

we’ve booked, cancelled and been rebooked by the airline 9 times in less than 24 hours

It is crazy. other than Bay Area non-stop to Hawaii or Cabo, I let my wife handle all of our flights. I got a taste of what she has to deal with when she used my airline miles to book 2 R/Ts to Europe from CA. Since it used my miles, my email got all the flight changes. She booked about 10 months in advance. in first 6 months after she booked, I prob got 20 emails about flight or seat changes. Some was crazy stuff, like they changed the departure time by 2 minutes. The seat changes blew me away.
"You went to the trouble of booking way ahead to get biz class seats and now theyre changing your seats? These don't sound like biz class anymore."
She was the cool veteran saying "I'll deal with it. Those may not be the seats we end up with. It will get fixed."
I swear I won't let her use my email for another R/T like that.

"Row 1A and row 1C to row 36 back by the toilets was a really big downgrade" What makes them think they can do that? What does the Sec of Transportation who is supposedly so on-the-ball about fighting for customers' rights have to say?

 

[clifffaith]

Some was crazy stuff, like they changed the departure time by 2 minutes. The seat changes blew me away.

Careful! We were once changed by 5 minutes only to find out it was 24 hrs 5 minutes for a layover on Fiji that was supposed to only be several hours. Luckily Worldmark had room for us and as a result we had a relaxing bus tour of the local sights. Would never otherwise have seen Fiji— it simply was not on our list of places we wanted to visit.

 

[beejaybee]

"Row 1A and row 1C to row 36 back by the toilets was a really big downgrade" What makes them think they can do that? What does the Sec of Transportation who is supposedly so on-the-ball about fighting for customers' rights have to say?

Given the domino effect of flight cancellations, I am sure you were not the only 1st class passengers to be relegated to the back of the plane when their flight had to be rebooked. I suppose you might have waited for another flight that would have had seats for you in the class you'd originally booked.

 

[geist1223]

So when the Airline moves you from First Class to Steerage in the back of the airplane do they refund the price difference from the two?

 

[stmartinfan]

Sounds like a nightmare! Between the LA fires and snow across the south, I bet the airlines are scrambling. Hope you get lucky with the new flight options.

 

[dougp26364]

Total re-bookings for this trip ended at 9. By the time we arrived I was so paranoid that every time my phone made a noise, I thought it was another cancellation and re-booking. We managed to keep our first class seating the entire trip, but it was a struggle.
I have no friggin’ clue how their system chooses flights to rebook. The final leg they had is us re-booked into main cabin, flying into EWR and catching a connection with o RSW. There was a direct flight DCA to RSW with 2 first class seats next to each other…….and arrived 5 hours earlier. My guess is they were trying to keep us as close to our original arrival time as possible since our departure times swung wildly.

 

[Superchief]

I feel sorry for you for having to rely on American to fly from Wichita. We had one of our worst travel experiences traveling there for a wedding. Four of us were traveling together. I am 40k short of being a million miler with American, but have no status. I booked our flights to have at least 90 minute layovers in DFW, and the reserved flights back had a 2 hr layover. Due to bad previous experiences with American commuter flights, I chose the flights with the long layover. Shortly before our trip, American changed all of us to a return flight with only a 50 minute layover. I tried to change it back with no success. On the day of our return trip, we got to the airport and everything looked fine when we checked in, and the inbound jet was on time. As we were riding up the escalator to security, I received a text notification of a delay. I immediately went back to the American desk to attempt to get on the later flight. They could only get two of us on a flight the next day, and the remaining two the following day. They refused to try to book us on another airline with the excuse that their systems couldn't do it. While waiting at their desk, I checked my Delta app and was able to find flights to get two of us (my wife worked the next day) back that night. Fortunately, the point requirement was reasonable so I booked the flight. My daughter and her friend spent the night and returned the next day. I couldn't get a refund from American at the desk, but was able to eventually get it back. My originally scheduled flights all would have been on time with no problems, so I am still angry with American for arbitrarily changing those flights. We have some friends in Wichita and we previously fly to KCI and drive, but there are no longer any non-stop flights from CVG. I've had much better travel experiences overall with Delta than American over the past few years.

I hope the rest of your trip goes smoothly. Are you going to Crystal Shores?

 

[dougp26364]

Yes, we are at Crystal Shores, and also Charter Club since we had HGVC points we needed to use.

We’ve had issues with every airline flying in/out of Wichita. The issue always seems to originate with the affiliate airlines they use. Most of the time it’s not to bad.

Short layovers at DFW can be a challenge, especially since they’re started using a lot of E gates. Most of the time I can use the trAAin and be fine. The E gates require a lot of walking and my wife doesn’t walk that fast or that far.