Inefficient

I do not travel often but in December my mother decided we would visit our family in Bulgaria this July. She booked a flight through a travel agent.

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7/1/2014 5:55 PM - 7:42 PM
DTW to PHL US Airways 3242

7/1/2014 8:40 PM - 7/2/2014 10:30 AM
PHL to FRA US Airways 702

7/2/2014 6:30 PM - 9:50 PM
FRA to SOF Bulgaria Air 438

7/2/2014 11:55 PM - 12:45 PM
SOF to BOJ Bulgaria Air 975

Our first flight from Detroit was 40 minutes late and we missed our connection. The lady at the special service desk was very friendly and quickly found us a flight from PHL to LHW and a connection from LHW to SOF. The layover was the same amount of time and we wouldn't be late or anything.

Everything was fine until we went to get our boarding passes in London. At the desk we were told that we came too early and we should come two hours before our flight to get our passes. When we came we were told that only one of our tickets were changed and that my mothers tickets weren't changed and still set to the FRA tickets. We were told to go to the US Airways desk and have them adjust the tickets. By the time we got to the desk we had already missed boarding since LHW is such a large airport. On top of that, there actually wasn't anyone at the desk, they're only open 4 hours a day. Thankfully an American Airlines associate helped us get in contact with the US Airways office in the UK and they found us new flights for the next day. Unfortunately the same flights weren't available the next day and we had a 12 hour layover in Sofia.

He told us that he couldn't authorize any hotel vouchers or anything and that we should pay for our own, keep the receipts and try to get compensated when we get back home. We also had to pay for the shuttle to the hotel and spend extra money on food at the airports.

My question is how do I go about getting this money back, and what other compensation should I try to get for all this trouble?

tl;dr - I ended up at my final destination over 30 hours late due to the airline and ended up spending a boat load of money because of it. How do I get compensated?

Also, thank you guys for reading this and helping out, I'm going crazy trying to figure out what to do.

aBroadAbroad

Welcome to FlyerTalk. Sorry to hear of your troubles. Since this query relates strictly to US, your post has been relocated to the US Airways forum where it is more likely to be seen by members who can best advise you.

Responding FlyerTalkers will please note that this thread originated at the flame-free Information Desk, and reply accordingly.

Thanks everyone, and good luck to the OP.

~Moderator, Information Desk

PHL

The best thing you can do is write a concise email to US Airways customer service explaining the sequence of events. Stick to the facts, and explain how you and your party were put out due to the initial issue where an agent apparently did not change tickets for everyone in the party.

The initial cause of the whole problem was the delayed DTW-PHL flight that led to the misconnect. Did they tell you what the delay reason was?

Inefficient

It was a mechanical issue, we sat on the runway for over 30 minutes.

TheFlyingMan

Did they tell you it was mechanical? Usually sitting on the runway is an air traffic control issue, which can sometimes be out of US's hands. However, the agent not changing the other ticket is grounds for compensation if it caused the flight to be missed.

Inefficient

Yes the pilot told us there was an issue with the plane.

3Cforme

The Contract of Carriage denies liability for secondary costs: subsequent lodging, extra transportation costs, missed work... If you make an explicit demand for such costs to be covered, US is likely to take a firm reading of the contract and give you very little (maybe some miles).

IMHO, a better line of argument is that the agent who rebooked you failed to complete the task correctly, and that led to complications with later connections. That US was responsible for rebooking you when they delivered late to a connecting point is not in question; that is the industry convention.

If you do better than 25,000 miles per person or $300 vouchers, please come back to tell.

Venabili

Bulgaria Air is not in the one world alliance so the fact that US Air actually rerouted you via London is surprising to start. Iberia does have an agreement with FB but US/American does not.

The only wrongdoing here is the second not-changed ticket -- did they give you Boarding passes or any documentation showing that it was indeed moved via London? The rest is above and beyond service - technically speaking you had a ticket to FRA with US Air and they changed it to London to help you catch another flight...

On a separate matter - this was a tight connection in PHL in the best of days and anything going wrong would have blown it. Considering that you had non-alliance flights after that, I would have not risked it.

What does the travel agent you used to book said when you called them when you missed the connection? Did they tell you to deal with US air or did they give you another option? If you never called them - why? One of the reasons to use agents is exactly this kind of situations.

3Cforme

If the travel agent put the itinerary on a single ticket, US has responsibility to get the passenger to the final ticketed destination, irrespective of the last segment on US metal.

Day of departure disruptions are the responsibility of the operating carrier. The TA might have been able to help - but maybe not given booked fare classes. US is totally on the hook (again, if a single ticket).

The passenger isn't responsible for obtaining evidence of being rebooked and reticketed. The job is simply supposed to be done correctly. E-tickets and all...

Venabili

I did not say that they were not on the hook but in my experience with this kind of tickets (connection to non-alliance airline), US just put you on the next flight on the same route (24 hours if need be) - which is why I changed the way I am going back to Sofia this year when the alliances changed. So rerouting via London was a bit surprising. That's all.

The fact that US did the rerouting probably means that it was on one ticket indeed but it is possible that there was something else going on. As I said - that second ticket non-change is the only problem here - and we do not know the full story on what happened.

As for e-tickets and so on, once you are in IRROPS, checking to make sure that you have the paperwork you need is kinda normal. Or maybe it is just me.

Just thinking aloud.

Inefficient

Unfortunately we didn't call our agent, we didn't have any phones that worked and the agent at the AA desk helped us by calling US for us.

The lady that booked us to London did provide us with some printout that showed the changed flights but it wasn't a pass or anything like that, it was just a bunch of airport codes on some brown looking paper.

I hate to question the guy with almost 20k posts but are you sure they aren't responsible for any of the fees that stemmed from them messing up our flights? The people that also missed their connection that were in line in front of us were getting put up in hotels by US Airways for flights the next day.

Either way, which email would I contact, they have like 50 different ways to contact them and it's a bit overwhelming.

Thanks for the help guys, I really do appreciate it.

LowlyDLsilver

You're talking about people who mis-connected in PHL, right? On a mechanical delay where they can't get you to your destination they would provide a hotel in PHL - where they have deals with hotels for below market rates. Although they messed up the re-route, they did reroute you to get you to your destination.

Overseas, the staff are probably not even US employees, most likely contracted out, and have little to no power to give you hotel rooms, vouchers, etc.

While it is no help now, going forward, booking a tight connection to a once-a-day international flight is inherently unwise. While an infrequent traveler wouldn't see it as a problem, these forums are littered with threads how "rotten (insert airline name here) ruined my (cruise, honeymoon, ...) by being late". Frankly, I'm a bit dumbfounded that a travel agent would put you in that position, as they should know better. Personally, would much rather kill a couple hours at a connecting airport than take the risk, but others will likely disagree.