aztimm

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/gloss...tterSelected=B

Often1

When considering IRROPS, you have to look at what else might be available. The pickings are slim. Presuming availability (not always the case), it's either a day in NYC or being routed down to IAD to catch the IAD-JNB at 1740.

This is one where you admit your mistake, get the reroute done, be nice and hope the fees are waived and suck it up if they aren't.

ukyank

Well I guess I'll be rolling the dice on the connection after all.

Had a long conversation with a very nice US rep. Was going to switch to the earlier morning PIT-CLT-JFK that was mentioned here but that ended up being not a legal connection (needed 75mins to connect between carriers in JFK, and that option gave 70mins - argued about that 5mins to no avail).

Really was a moot point anyways as I was told that they are warning anyone making any changes whatsoever to *A bookings now could result in possible problems or cancellations with the old partner airlines, so whether that's true or not I figured I'd rather risk missing a connection then having the itinerary cancelled out somewhere along the way.

I'll be sure to update on the success or failure, but you'll unfortunately have to wait for some thread necromancy as the booking was for Feb 2015.

Thanks got the help regardless; much appreciated.

weave

Thread subscribed, I'll wait.

Often1

The US warning to OP regarding not making changes to *A bookings is worthy of note for many travelers. If you take a quick spin through what happened to many BMI customers who held *A bookings when BMI was absorbed by BA, the clear message is that those records should not be touched for any reason.

UA Fan

I agree.

ukyank

And when they said ANY they really mean any.
On the short PIT-LGA segment flight I was originally booked on there was a First seat that opened up that the lady offered to move me to, to at least expedite exiting the plane (not that it really matters as it's a small commuter one anyways) & the manager on duty warned not to change even that as it could negatively effect the overall booking.

I got the impression that US themselves have no idea what would happen.

eponymous_coward

You realize that if you miss the connection, US is going to have to change the ticket anyways in order for you to get to JNB, right?

If it was me I'd rather the ticket got messed up now (plenty of time for US to figure out how to reaccommodate you- right now US isn't charging YQ for BA and BA flies to JNB- or do you have some wacky "I'm going to JNB, DOH, CDG, PER, ANC, EZE and KTM" itinerary that's impossible to replicate once US left *A?) rather than mid-trip. FWIW, there's also no guarantee SA will still be a partner come February 2015 (US has been losing former *A partners regularly since 3/31, I would expect more to come).

Good luck, I guess. Those cancellation statistics (25%), time of year you are flying (February, decent shot at bad weather), the fact that any schedule change for the next 10 months could blow things wide open... I hope you don't mind some tolerance for risk. I'd avoid making any non-refundable hotel bookings.

Often1

This is a no-win for OP. If it were simply change fees, I would say that it's nuts to risk spending 3-4 days waiting for availability to open up on some circuitous route to JNB. But, OP is at enough risk this far out of a schedule change (either the US flight departs later or SAA earlier or a bit of both) and he is SOL. Worse is the misconnect with no relationship between US & SAA.

eponymous_coward

It's why when I booked my *A award for later this year I made sure there was only one carrier on each leg (outbound NH, inbound OZ), and the ICN connection on OZ is the only one I mildly worry about (70 minute connection, a HKG-ICN flight that has lousy on-time)... but I have a backup flight ID'ed to get me to the US if that goes bad (ICN-LAX instead of ICN-SEA, and OZ should be able to get me on SOMETHING out of LAX). Plus it's only 2+ months out (summer schedules already set).

Complex itins well into late 2014-2015 are going to be... interesting.