Originally Posted by
JerryFF
There is another alternative. I know this is not a popular view on FT but a high quality and responsible travel agent with whom you have a good personal relationship can do even more for you when a flight is cancelled than even the airline themselves. For one thing, you can reach the travel agent on the phone when the airline phone lines are busy. And the travel agent may find out your flight is cancelled and notify you long before you find out for yourself.
That is NOT my experience with our mandatory corporate travel agency (BCD). Hours to reissue a ticket. Only once have they found a seat on another airline (UA) that the original airline (AA) couldn't find, but I found the seat myself before talking to either AA or BCD (turned out that UA was blocking the inventory from AA so we had to book as a new ticket purchase).