April 2011 will mark my 24th consecutive annual trip to New Orleans for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. For part of the trip, I will be bringing my 11-year-old daughter, who has been every year of her life (this will be her 12th JazzFest). I booked BOS-MSY flights on April 28, returning MSY-BOS on May 1, and then because I'm going back down without my daughter, I booked myself (on a separate PNR) BOS-MSY later on May 1; my plan is to have my ex-wife pick up our daughter at BOS, and I'll turn around and fly right back down to MSY.

As many of you know, AA has been modifying its schedules of late, so they screwed up my flights. They had me arriving at BOS on May 1 on the first PNR at 355p (instead of the originally scheduled 300p), and departing BOS on May 1 on the second PNR at 1240p (instead of the originally scheduled 350p). Obviously this wasn't gonna work. No reason to panic: I called the EXP desk, and the agent, without hesitation, changed the BOS-MSY flight on the second PNR to a 520p departure. Great I said, but since I no longer need to arrive at BOS as early as I'm scheduled to, I'd love to get an hour more sleep and depart from MSY on the first PNR a little later that morning. The agent said she could not change my MSY-BOS flight; she said that because the departure time was the same and my layover (at ORD) was simply longer, she couldn't change the flights for me. (The original schedule departed MSY at 740a and arrived BOS at 300p, and the new scheduled departed MSY at 740a and arrived BOS at 355p). She said she could not justify this change without a change fee.

I said thank you very much, had her change only the BOS-MSY flight on the second PNR, and ended the call. I immediately called back, spoke to a second agent, explained that my ORD layover had been extended to over 2-1/2 hours, and asked to change to different flights that would result in a shorter (90 minutes) layover at DFW. No problem. The entire call took less than 90 seconds.

[BTW, for those interested in attending JazzFest and experiencing first hand what makes this such an extraordinary event, check out Swagland a website maintained by FT's very own swag.]