Originally Posted by
bbzidane
An update.
I called Avianca and they checked availability and said nothing is available. Nothing on the same day, nothing two following days. The flight is an award flight and with no award availability, there is nothing they can do.
It will be AC that did the rebooking. In violation of their own rules. If Avianca would pount that out to them, my guess is that AC would rebook even though there is no reward inventory available.
But to get that to happen, there would be a need to get Avianca to escalate the issue with AC. Seems like the people whom one can speak to are clueless...
These are the options that comes to mind now:
- See if I can cancel the return trip of the award itinerary, hoping it doesn't interfere with the outbound flight and book a direct flight back for them.
- Another option is to wait and see if more availability opens up closer to the return flight date and see if I can change it to that.
- Let things be, and see if they get lucky and manage to catch the connecting flight, or if AC will step in and help them out at that time when their connecting flight has left. Not sure if AC will rebook them, as it seems like AV is responsible. Will AC rebook them?
- Lastly, book a flight out of YVR to YYZ.
Don't cancel. Let things stand. If they miss the connection, onus is on the airlines to rebook on the next avaialble flight.
Will give AV another call and see what are the policies are on modifying award flights.
That's what they already told you: that they do not have award inventory.
Instead, point out to them that *THEY* booked an illegal connection. Or that maybe AC did and they should get AC to fix it.
As people mentioned, this flight should not be bookable initially, but that is not what I started with.
The original connecting flight was at 17:05, not 16:00, but AC cancelled the flight that day. I guess an automated system bumped it to the closest flight, which was 16:00.
Should not be bookable, period. Not initially, not ever. They violated their own rules. But now they did, it's their problem, period. If they miss the connection AC is obliged to rebook on next available flight.