Originally Posted by
lowfareair
So I take it all of your Delta tickets are fully-refundable Y, which you pay for out of pocket and are not reimbursed by your company/clients?
In the past five years I've had this happen twice before *Without a travel advisory* on AA & WN. Both times they allowed me to change to the next best option outside of the weather without a fee.
It can be in the carrier's best interest to switch someone proactively rather than need to deal with it at at least one, possibly two airports. I would agree that it would be too much to ask if the request was 'the weather looks bad, can we rebook on a flight tomorrow afternoon?', but when it's simply 'how about a different routing that leaves and arrives within 20 minutes of the original and there are still seats available', it becomes a much different story.
You have valid points about being proactive. But don't you think with the weather DL will have lots of people to re-route?
DL wants options for the passengers that are on a Y fare and ones that have higher status than your roommate, unless they can collect a fee.
One question I also must ask, why wasn't the SJC-DTW-PHL option purchased to begin with? It is common knowledge that ATL is a lot more delay prone than DTW
Hopefully you or your roommate will have luck at the airport.
I remember a statement from a UA agent in the late 70s, when the UA pilots went on strike and shutting down the airline and everybody was scrambling, it took me 2 days to get home and I had extra expenses due to the delay and I was complaining to the agent.
What he said 'these discounted tickets are a great deal when everything works the way they are supposed to, but when they don't they (discounted tickets) aren't a good deal." That was 30 years ago when the airline were much more flexible. I have kept that in the back of my mind ever since. Also, I don't always purchase Y tickets for personal or business travel, but when I think I need to be flexible I will purchase a refundable ticket (and they are not always full fare.) or I a willing to accept the fact I need to cough up a change fee.