Originally Posted by
SpaethCo
The nightmare scenario I want to avoid is being at the airport with a human in front of me willing to help me adjust my ticket to get me home, but being unable to do so because the airline doesn’t “own” the reservation and won’t take it over.
That’s why I stick to “utility” hotel bookings only on the portal. If I show up for 1 night at an airport hotel, even if the portal provider mangles my reservation badly I can likely still bail myself out by booking (albeit at a much higher rate) on the spot to still have a room for the night.
The airline IRROP scenario laid out does not make sense.
Under an IRROP situation, the change can be rebooked directly with the airline OR the travel agent. The airline owns the reservation day of departure.
In other words you actually have an alternative point of contact (travel agent) if airline call center hold time or physical airport queue times are excessive.
Originally Posted by
Jprod
that nightmare scenario can also happen with award travel if you book through a parter airline. Long story short - end of January flight got cancelled from Sarasota to Newark. My ticket was booked on UA via Avianca using LifeMiles . The gate agent said I can see your ticket and can’t manipulate it because Avianca has control of ticket. I was on the phone with Avianca for 3 hours and they at the end hung up on me. Somehow after all of that I was rebooked the following day to Ord. My final destination was Cleveland. To this day I’m not sure how that happened . I was thankful that it did because I almost bought 3 new one ways to Cleveland ( my wife and one of my children were with me at the time )
So award bookings also come with issues as I painfully found out
As per IATA framework, around the day of departure the ticket falls under control of the operating carrier regardless of which airline issued it. This allows for check-in.
If an UA flight IRROPS, UA will have to rebook. If passenger was traveling on an Avianca issued ticket, UA will submit the original applicable flight coupons to Avianca for payment while at the same time UA will issued a new ticket on it’s own stock for the rebooked flights. Sounds like the UA gate agent is not fully informed of the rules involving tickets plated by other airlines.