Was driving by the Air India office earlier this afternoon so decided to stop & see if I could change my flight without paying an exorbitant amount in change fees & penalties.

In my many visits to the AI city office over the years I have come across a number of familiar faces who seem to have been at that office forever. One is a pleasant & helpful lady who sits at the frequent flyer desk & another is a duty manager who has always been very helpful even during the AI government days. Both know me well & I have even helped out the manager's son with a legal matter in the past so they always treat me nicely every time I have had to go to the office in the past.

I was hoping to run into one of them & luckily they were both there. I went up to both of them separately, chit-chatted for a couple of minutes & then asked the duty manager if she could help with my ticket. I told her there was an equipment change & the aircraft I had originally booked on had changed from BOM-EWR to BOM-JFK on the same day. I asked if it was possible for her to put me on the JFK flight & if that wasn't possible then allow me to cancel the ticket without a penalty.

She said she would try & asked me to wait while she looked into it. After about 20 minutes she came back & said that she had to ask her superiors for permission to change my flight without the fare difference but they had refused. However, as a one time exception she did get permission to let me cancel without a penalty. I asked her to go ahead & do that & she processed the full refund.

I just booked with KL/DL for this upcoming trip. Guess I'll give AI another look for my May trip & hope I have better luck in getting to fly on one of the new planes.