Check your air reservations !!!!

[knarf]

Last July,2005 I booked my air thru Expedia for my cruise. About 3 weeks before the cruise, while on line I just happened to check my air reservations( I don't know why I thought of it but I did. So I went and checked and lo and behold - it said to contact US AIR because of a change in my flight. I immediately called US Air and was told of the change that they made..it would not work for me at all. So one full hour later and after talking to many operators. I was able to have it changed for me. What a stressful hour that was !!!:( :mad: :confused: :) I was quite upset with expedia that they hadn't informed me of the change.

I am cruising on 5/14/06 so I made my air reservations with Orbitz about a month ago. Guess what....yesterday,Orbitz e-mailed me saying my flight was changed by US Air and that I should contact them. Well you can imagine, my heart stopped and I said, "Darn it" or something along that line !!!!!!!!!! I called US Air and said it would not work for me and would you believe in 10 minutes I had a new flight. No problems at all . I couldn't believe it worked out so well for me. Thank you Orbitz for letting me know of the change, and Expedia.. take a lesson. The moral of the story--check your air reservations often..don't relie on anyone to tell you... Take care , Knarf(Frank backwards)

[jasl]

Good advice..... THANK YOU for posting and good luck with further air reservations.

[mii]

I have learned long ago to always check your air reservations because 99% of the time if there is a change they do not let you know. I check at least once a week.

 

Marilyn

[silentbob007]

Hmmm ... I wonder if that is a normal occurance with Expedia. I have only used Priceline and the company sites of the airlines and have always been notified of even the most trivial (5 minute) change.

[critterchick]

Air Canada has yet to tell us that our flight from Vancouver to LA was changed from 2:10 to 3:55, and we booked through their site. American & United aren't very good at notification either, in my experience. So we check regularly.

[megr1125]

shoot, last year for our NOS cruise, delta changed my flights 4 times in ONE DAY and I only found out when I went to do online checkin. After calling the foreign country to where they offshore their reservation agents who speak no english i took the airport shuttle from the hotel to the ticket counter and fixed things. I did this twice! After the 1st time they called and said they changed it again to route me from PHL to CVG to MIA. Yikes. Wound up going thru hot-lanta with a 2-3 hour layover but it wasn't bad.

 

Pays to monitor the arrangements daily!

[greatam]

Make sure you sign up for all the notifications each site has, if you want to avoid SOME of the problems with non-notification. All are different and usually must be specifically signed up for, either through your profile or specifically for each flight at or after purchase. Most allow notifications to cell, PDA, email, home phone, and some even send snail mail.

 

A lot of people, myself included, book the plane ticket, print out the confirmation and then expect the airline, etc. to notify us if something goes wrong. They really have no way of knowing how to contact you, except for the email address on file with your purchase. Just because you put in a phone number when booking a reservation is not enough. Most phone numbers entered are related to verifying credit card charges. If it is truly an EMERGENCY, the airline may go back and retrieve the phone number. But for time changes, especially those involving just a few minutes, airline do not have the ability to retrieve the phone numbers. Email does no good if you cannot retrieve it, so the notifications DO NOT get sent via email unless the customer SPECIFICALLY requests email notification.

 

The easiest way to sign up for notifications with the airlines is sign up for their FF program. When you are signing up for the FF program, there is a page for notifications. By doing that, you should have taken care of the problem with an airline booking.

 

Travelocity, Expedia, etc. require you to either edit your "profile" or sign up for notifications for every flight.

[critterchick]

Make sure you sign up for all the notifications each site has, if you want to avoid SOME of the problems with non-notification. All are different and usually must be specifically signed up for, either through your profile or specifically for each flight at or after purchase. Most allow notifications to cell, PDA, email, home phone, and some even send snail mail.

 

A lot of people, myself included, book the plane ticket, print out the confirmation and then expect the airline, etc. to notify us if something goes wrong. They really have no way of knowing how to contact you, except for the email address on file with your purchase. Just because you put in a phone number when booking a reservation is not enough. Most phone numbers entered are related to verifying credit card charges. If it is truly an EMERGENCY, the airline may go back and retrieve the phone number. But for time changes, especially those involving just a few minutes, airline do not have the ability to retrieve the phone numbers. Email does no good if you cannot retrieve it, so the notifications DO NOT get sent via email unless the customer SPECIFICALLY requests email notification.

 

The easiest way to sign up for notifications with the airlines is sign up for their FF program. When you are signing up for the FF program, there is a page for notifications. By doing that, you should have taken care of the problem with an airline booking.

 

Travelocity, Expedia, etc. require you to either edit your "profile" or sign up for notifications for every flight.

 

It's still hit or miss. We're signed up for email notifications and seldom get any. Just often enough that I know I signed up properly!

[greatam]

dup post

[greatam]

It's still hit or miss. We're signed up for email notifications and seldom get any. Just often enough that I know I signed up properly!

 

Change that to phone or cell. Email is notoriously unreliable due to firewalls, server space, spam controls, etc. I am constantly bombarded with AA announcements on my cell about flight changes.

[wrp96]

Change that to phone or cell. Email is notoriously unreliable due to firewalls, server space, spam controls, etc. I am constantly bombarded with AA announcements on my cell about flight changes.

 

Definitely agree with this advice. Think about it. If you are traveling, you are more likely to have regular access to your cell phone (or at least your voice mail) to check the notification. You won't always have available internet access.

[MichTraveler]

I booked flights for Dec/2006 a few weeks ago -- 330 days in advance so I could use FF miles to get to Hawaii. Since then, I have gotten 3 emails about flight changes. NWA almost does too much notification. I always recheck at about 3 months, and then again weekly the month before. Regardless of notification from the airlines, I am always proactive about checking my flights.

[N.FL Cruisers]

Expedia has the right to change and did so with us without telling us. Our flight wasn't changed but the hotel was. It was really upsetting since we had done plenty of homework printing out maps to places to visit from this one hotel and then we were moved about 5 miles away. Friends and family ended up at this hotel and we were pushed away. Ended up having to get cabbies just to meet up with them throughout our vacation week. Sorry you to got stung by them too knarf.

[greatam]

Expedia has the right to change and did so with us without telling us. Our flight wasn't changed but the hotel was. It was really upsetting since we had done plenty of homework printing out maps to places to visit from this one hotel and then we were moved about 5 miles away. Friends and family ended up at this hotel and we were pushed away. Ended up having to get cabbies just to meet up with them throughout our vacation week. Sorry you to got stung by them too knarf.

 

Another reason NOT to use Expedia. Their customer service is HORRIBLE and they outsource about 45% of their hotel bookings to third party booking agencies (can you say hotels.com and others). They say they don't but they do. When you have a problem with a hotel and they give a phone number to call, the phone is answered with "hello, this is Bill, Ralph, etc. When the agent knows NOTHING about what you are talking about and you ask who you are calling (you thought you called an Expedia customer service number), you will be told you called hotels.com or some other third party.

 

Travelocity used to operate the same way, but 3 years ago, Travelocity took all hotel bookings internal. And Travelocity has "the guarantee". http://svc.travelocity.com/about/main/0,,TRAVELOCITY:EN|GUARANTEE_TVLY,00.html

 

I was one of the lucky ones who got an almost free trip to Fiji-$51.25.

 

Travelocity made good on the Fiji mistake for about 700 people. I have done no business with any booking agency other than Travelocity after that. The guarantee truly does work.

[LookingForward2]

After reading this thread, I checked on our flights. Well, lo and behold, one segment had changed! We booked a package through hotel.com. Our flights are from Pittsburgh to SanJuan (through Philadelphia). Our flight leaving San Juan was scheduled to leave at 2:40pm. It has now changed to 10:54am - from what I hear about disembarking in SJ this may be a problem, what do you all think?

 

This 10:54 flight also puts us into PHL a lot earlier than originally scheduled to catch our next flight to PIT. The first segment is on AA with the last segment on USAirway. I would also like to lessen the layover time.

 

Any advice?

 

Love these boards - so much information!

laura

[wrp96]

You need to call whomever you booked through now and get that changed. You might be able to make a 10:54 flight but from everything I've heard about San Juan it is highly unlikely. Your flight out needs to be no earlier than noon.

[knarf]

Hi Lookingforward2,

I would get on line see what other flights are leaving that day, copy them and then call your airline or hotel.com and politely tell them that the change will definitely not work!!!! Give them the flights you copied and tell them to please change you to "that one." I find being polite often pays off( even though you'd like to strangle someone for changing your flight after you did all that research !!!!! Good luck. I have had to change a couple of times on different cruises and it has always worked out. :)

Take care, Frank-Knarf

[cruiselover64]

Even though our flight from Detroit to Barcelona is not for another 8 months, I checked our reservation on line with Delta. We were originally scheduled to fly from Detroit to Atlanta then from Atlanta to Barcelona.

 

It seems they have cancelled our ATL - BCN flight and rerouted us from ATL to JFK to BCN. This wouldn't be a problem, except our ATL - JFK flight is scheduled to leave ATL seven hours before we arrive from Detroit. :mad: :confused:

 

How could a human and/or computer miss this scheduling conflict? I am now waiting for a resolution. As suggested by other posters, I will be checking this often for the next 8 months.

[Krazy Kruizers]

We book our own flights.

 

In the last week we have gotten 2 e-mails from Delta concerning time changes for our March flights.