DCAhome

Similar issue here. Had a -4 hour connection in Toronto to get to BWI. Was happy to change it to a legal connection to DCA.

farnorthtrader

Interesting, as AE/AC just let me do that exactly. Lufthansa/Eurowings Discover had a schedule change that created a misconnect in Frankfurt. I contacted AE to try to get a later flight FRA to FCO to fix the misconnect and they proactively offered to put me on YEG-YYZ-FCO (all AC metal) instead of YEG-YYC-FRA-FCO. Cut the travel time from about 24 hours to about 15. There are 9 of us in business, so we paid about 1.2 million AE points for an itinerary that would have cost 3.2 million (YEG to FCO, returning CMN to YEG). Cash price was about $32,000, now is about $106,000.

canadiancow

Cutting out one connection isn't exactly what I'm talking about haha.

It's all about being reasonable. If you book SFO-YVR-YUL-YOW-YYZ for 10k points, do not expect to get SFO-YYZ (standalone cost of 100k) when there's a schedule change. In your case, there didn't seem to be a "similar" alternative. Either you left at the same time and got in way later, or they cut out one connection.

farnorthtrader

Fair enough, just was (pleasantly) surprised by AE thinking that a a routing priced at nearly 4 times what we paid would be reasonable. We are 9 of 14 business class seats YEG to YYZ and 9 of 12 YUL to YEG on the return. Wasn’t too happy with the new Aeroplan “pay whatever Aeroplan says you pay” redemption rates, but every seat being an award seat can certainly work out during schedule changes

flyingwalker

Purchased a Round trip: LHR to YVR, YVR to YYC, YYC to LHR all Business class in May 2022.
Had a email from AC stating 'due to unexpected business or operational constrains on our planned flight schedule', they have changed one flight LHR to YVR to an earlier time with no problem for me.
But they cancelled my one internal flight YVR to YYC and automatically transferred to another later flight without questioning if that was ok or to choose another of our choice.
Had to confirm these changes, in doing so and confirmed. Because of they're the ones changing the flights, I went through online to change to the next earlier flight, they want to charge £200 to change the flight for no fault of mine.
Spent an hour dialling the freephone '0800 ..............', going from one dept to another with no joy in solving this.
This may be punishment for changing from BA.

yyzgigi

Is too late at this point but when you got the original message on the schedule change you should have had a button that said show alternate flight options in addition to the acknowledge new flight button. Now that you’ve accepted the online system cannot differentiate your change from a discretionary change that requires a fee. Although wait times with the call centre may be long reservations will move you to a different comparable routing if you are clear that it was a schedule change that caused the issue.

ricardo galimatias

i never confirm changes if i don't like them.

just the other day i received a change notification and had to call. after about a 30 min hold, the agent told me that he does changes all day long. he implied that that was almost all he did. i felt like telling him that maybe they wouldn't have to do so many changes if people could actually do the changes online!

i have never ever seen this button actually work. i always get the message telling me that there are no other options. has it worked for you? for anyone else?

yyzgigi

it often doesn’t work, but for relatively straightforward changes it does work. I had a change on YYZ-YYC flight where they were adding flights and adjusting flights. I was moved from the 787 to a A321 with a small schedule change and yesterday was able to easily change online to my preferred wide body flight.

TechnoTourist

It works for me some of the time, high frequency routes in particular.

vancouver25k

Has never worked for me. I can see alternates, but can never get them applied.

canadiancow

I'd say the button shows up maybe 15% of the time for me, and when it shows up, it works less than half the time.

Celticfrost

Hi, I have reward booking from Melbourne to Toronto with a layover in Sydney. Previously layover in Sydney was around 3 hours.

I found today through an email from Air Canada that my flight from Melbourne to Sydney now departs a day early and that layover in Sydney is now 12+ hours overnight stay.

I wanted to find out from knowledgeable members here if I have any options available that makes my travel easier before I call Aeroplan ? I understand I will have to call Aeroplan but calling them from overseas with a wait time of over an hour isn't ideal.

Thank you

Edit: Was able to reach an agent on the phone who advised that I was required to be at the Sydney airport 4 hours prior to the departure. Air Canada flight leaves at 9:30 in the morning and earliest flight from Melbourne arrives at 7:35am which leaves 1:55 minutes between the connection. I found it quite strange as 4 hour limit cannot be mct in any case.

YYJMSP

Another data point -- Aeroplan redemption of 2 pairs of LH flights, in the first pair the second flight was cancelled and replaced with one arriving 3.5hrs later (i.e. 3.5hrs extra layover time). Looked up alternatives (thanks CowTool!), called into Aeroplan, got both flights changed to another pair, first departing a bit earlier than originally planned but second arriving not much later than originally planned, so closer to original schedule with a much shorter layover.

old flights were 15K ea in J. new flights were showing on Aeroplan as 25K ea in J. didn't get charged anything, was expecting a potential reprice...

gcashin

So, AC seems to be playing games again with denying refunds. Have a direct Canada-US flight with significant schedule changes of >5 hours in one direction, and the other direction was changed from a direct flight to a connecting flight. Website wasn't offering a refund, so I'd called in to cancel and request a refund. The agent said it should be fine and put me on hold, but then came back and said because the schedule changes were processed, it was no longer eligible for a refund. I'd insisted that this was eligible for a refund based on AC's own tariff and the agent put me on hold to check with a supervisor, and reiterated that once the schedule change is acknowledged, the ticket is no longer eligible for a refund. Total BS.

The agent I got today insisted that once it's HK, it means you accepted the schedule change and forfeit any eligibility for a refund too.

canadiancow

That's... Wrong.