One of my flight bookings has changed so much that it’s basically unrecognisable. Well, I exaggerate slightly, as the airlines have made an effort to keep me going where I need to go, but still. I made this booking at the end of March, and since then I have had six sets of flight cancellations. Six!
American Airlines seems to be chopping and changing flights all over the place. My ticket is with British Airways and this has resulted in hours on the phone to get things rebooked. Thank goodness the staff in the Newcastle and South Africa call centres are lovely.
The Original Ticket
The original booking is long gone, but I have the first change issued in June. At that point, I was flying Dublin to London on BA, connecting to London to New York on AA, overnighting there, then flying JFK to Los Angeles the following day.
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- My favourite red and blue squares!
After spending some time with friends, the trip back was Denver to Los Angeles, LA to Boston, Boston to London and London to Dublin. Everything was on AA apart from the first sector and last two. Perhaps that was my mistake.
Unrecognisable Ticket
Since then, things changed. At one point I had to leave the night before and overnight, as the connection at London changed. That became superfluous on yet another change (pleasingly, as it saved overnight hotel costs!). The flight between Denver and Los Angeles changed timing by more than a couple of hours thrice. Recently AA1 was cancelled so I was moved back to the 6am departure from New York.
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- Yes, yes it has! This is a very familiar e-mail these days.
Boston got removed due to other flight cancellations and timing changes, and LA on the way back went from an overnight to a connection. It’s all been rather exhausting, not helped by frequently having to wait 20 minutes to over an hour on the phone for someone to take the call. Now all I need is for my ESTA to be cancelled and the whole thing will have been a moot point. USA in January or bust!
Overall Thoughts
While the ticket may be unrecognisable compared to what I originally booked, everything is still in place. The customer service from the agents I’ve spoken to throughout the saga has been impeccable and once on the phone the changes have been made without any fuss.
I’m quite looking forward to my trip, which will also see me flying Alaska Airlines for the first time in ages, not to mention the Amtrak Coast Starlight. Fun times ahead really, and no flight booking shenanigans will put me off.
Have you been experiencing a lot of cancellations or changes on your tickets recently? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image by Damian Hutter via Unsplash.
You should have seen the number of pandemic era bookings I had changed into something messed up. St. Louis (STL)-Little Rock (LIT) is an hour flight, tops. Southwest (WN) flies STL-LIT. I was going to take a 3 day jaunt down there to burn some miles and my STL-LIT-STL itinerary got changed to STL-LIT-Houston (HOU)-STL. OK fine. I booked this about 2 months out and the ‘Rona was still raging in it’s way. The change came about a month before the trip. A week later my booking was changed to STL-Phoenix (PHX)-LIT. A good 8 hours out of my way.… Read more »
Now that is a happy ending 🙂 That’s a crazy route at the end, basically flying all over the country. I would have also been fine with the various changes up to a point. There has to be a time to pull the plug and you definitely found yours. That was a far cry from a quick hop, by the end of it. Hopefully we will see less and less of this from now on… (he says as another flight cancellation arrived in my Inbox this morning!)