partner awards/schedule changes
 

I have a partner award ticket (with Condor and Alaska on route) for next summer. When I looked at the mobile app for a different reason and curiously checked on that itinerary, it told me that there was a schedule change and then after I clicked on it, that I needed to call in. But if I hadn’t looked, I wouldn’t have known.

Which got got me thinking - Does Alaska notify you when this happens? Is there some notification setting I need to turn on? And what is the state of ones booking when it’s in need of calling in? Can you lose your availability if you don’t call In right away to get the new schedule settled up? (These are business class flights, so don’t want to lose them; if I need to check daily, I could, but that’s a long way out to do this for)

Thanks!

I've got a few of these on partner awards for the summer right now as well. My experience is that they are usually just minor schedule changes that have little impact. If there are bigger changes that throw off your itinerary, they will reach out to you via email or phone call when it gets closer. These minor changes for flights booked far out are pretty standard. You can always go to the partner website and look up the flights you are on to see what the change is. My bet is that your departure or arrival times are changing by 10 minutes. If so, I've never bothered to call in and haven't had any issues. If it's more than that, certainly call.

It's typically something small, and sometimes you can acknowledge the changes on the website or app in ten seconds and be done with it, but even just yesterday I had to call in for a paid reservation because my return flight from SFO had been renumbered and scheduled for ten minutes earlier. :rolleyes:

So yes, it can be annoying, and there's no immediate notification, so I just check on my reservations periodically. But while you should try to get things straightened out ASAP, there's no need to panic over losing availability--in my experience, AS will do what it takes to make sure you still get where you go on time. I used AS miles for an AA Y trip to Colombia coming up in February, and I've had a whole bunch of schedule changes, including a cancellation of my first leg to DFW on AS a couple months ago. When I called in, they gave me a few options, including flying out earlier in the day and staying in a hotel on their dime until my connection the next morning, or having them contact AA to ask them to open up Y award space on the SEA-MIA direct. (I chose the latter, and apparently AA said no, but I got routed through AUS instead with barely any timing change.) And AS has the flexibility to open up their own award space as needed for reaccommodation.

I've been getting quite a few emails the past two weeks from AS' partner desk. I think agents have finally had time to go thru the reservations and clean up some, it seems they do one company and then the next. As some have been sitting on changes for quite a while and I don't call in unless its something closer in, or more urgent.

However I've noticed this tends to break the reservation more often now, so one needs to call in for any future changes versus modifying online. Not sure what has changed :(

if you let a schedule change fester for long enough without calling, they'll eventually call you. i've had this happen...IIRC, they call about 4-8 weeks prior to departure. so it seems that there is a system for ensuring people are contacted and these changes are cleared up before departure provided that they are major enough to cause a disruption.

I'm curious what would happen if they never got in touch with people (A.K.A wrong phone number, wrong email, etc)

that person/persons would probably be in for a surprise at check in, and i guess AS would do what they could to help them within reason.

Mine are always fixed automatically at some point.

It's annoying to get a notice that you have to call and it ends up being a 1 minute change in an arrival or departure. But this week I got an email from AS for the outbound and inbound for some award travel to Europe in late March/mid April. The changes were 25 mins earlier on the outbound from ANC (well worth knowing about!), 10 mins later departure from SEA, 5 mins earlier departure from LHR a few days later; on the return 5 mins later departure to LHR and no changes to the rest of the inbound. The only one that seems somewhat critical to me is the 25 mins earlier departure from ANC and I wonder if that's why I got the emails. Manage my booking does not require me to call before I can access my itineraries. That's an improvement! Maybe they are changing the system?

Mine required calling in for 10 minute changes, so not sure the rules...

They don't *require* calling for 10 minute changes. If you don't call, they'll eventually get around to it and fix it up.

But if you check on your reservation and there's a change more significant than the app and site can let you handle on your own--it seems to me like slight time changes are fine, but not when flight numbers change too--you have no way of knowing if it's a ten-minute change or a more significant issue unless you either 1) call in and get it fixed or 2) try to recreate your itinerary on the AS site or Google Flights and figure out how big the change is... in the time it would've taken to just call.

I had an AS / AA where the second flight (AA LAX-STL) was taken off the schedule. Had I waited, the reroute options would only have been more difficult. As it was I actually had to modify my plans considerably and leave a day earlier with different routing. For these reasons. I monitor my future reservations regularly. I don’t like surprises and prefer choices.

Sometimes I just want to get into the itinerary - change my seat or something - I don't want to wait for AS to get around to unlocking it and so I call....a 1 minute change.....really?

I regularly have this happen on partner awards. Most often the change is simply 5-30 min difference. A few times it’s been an hour or more. I’ve never had them call me. I do wish you could just click “accept” though rather than calling. I believe United allows this, as I seem to remember doing it. Or maybe it was Continental?

AS does have this feature, and I've used it for some very simple rescheduling--I think one was a three-minute change in arrival or departure time with no change to the other. But I still have to call in more often than not for similarly minor changes.

I guess that's true. But I wouldn't want to call in on a bad change before knowing what the other options were first. Basically I don't like making a call without knowing the desired outcome first. :D

How are you going to research the other options before calling when you don't know the extent of the change? Look up all space-available alternatives for each segment, just in case that's the one that got nixed?

Usually you can see the partner PNR and see what's been auto-rebooked. If it's AS metal, you can usually figure out the issue since there are not that many flights.

Yeah, look for the original confirmation email and compare this to other flights around the same time/ flight #. Might be able to get on a more desirable flight, or even net more miles. Not always. Good to see alternates before calling in.

I just had this happen to me; I have an award flight for August 2018 that includes the final legs of NAN - SFO - SEA on Fiji Airways. FJ switched their NAN - SFO flight from being on a Sunday to Saturday and auto booked us into the Saturday flight, but I had to call in to get the SFO - SEA legged patched up.

No idea when the schedule changed originally but glad I looked when I did so I could get my second flight updated to the correct day as well while there was still availability. I received no notification from Alaska, and just noticed it because I happened to be looking at the reservation. Wish there was some sort of email that came through to me though or alert banner on my Alaska account for things like this!

Yes there should be. Time for us all to write AS!

Aren't there third-party sites can keep track of this and notify you of changes? (Of course, it might a paid service, and you also might need to separately put each reservation into the third-party system once. But if it's really important to you...)

A few weeks ago AS cancelled the AS metal morning flights SEA and PDX to/from SFO and replaced them with VX. This lead to a big problem with my award itinerary PDX-SFO-CDG (on AF) with AS only offering a single evening flight PDX-SFO. I did get an email on this but it took a few days after I first noticed the itinerary with the message to call in. They initially wanted me to do a 22 hour layover in SFO and then I asked about the VX flight that replaced my morning AS flight and was told it would be elevated. It took two days but now I am on VX PDX-SFO and AF SFO-CDG with a 3 hour layover. This will be a problem for most partner awards starting in SEA and PDX connecting in SFO, at least until the integration is completed in April???

Imagine it will be a problem for those 4 months.

After then, award space in F will be the issue for those chasing premium cabins. 16>12>8 seats is a squeeze.

From what I have seen AS is very stingy with F saver award space.. My awards in March are saver level on partners, J on AF and in F on BA. The connecting flights in Europe on AF and BA are all in saver J but my connecting flights in the USA are all in saver Y on AS and VX. Using expertflyer I see that almost all of my AS flights have 7 upgrades to F available, which means F is almost empty, and yet no F saver awards seats. I land in LAS late on the 19th so would ideally would like the 10am LAS-PDX flight but it has no saver awards in F or Y available..

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...c85f363d99.jpg

I just got a note to call in (from the app) because my inbound was going to land 5 minutes later. Urrrgh! Why can’t I accept that via the app?

they're too busy enabling F meal pre-ordering... ;)