rune87

We all know when Alaska has a cancellation, its not pretty. Tonight...has almost pushed me to my wits end. AS1199 SAN to SEA. Get out to the runway and Pilot announces we need to pull off for a 10min Engine Check. Not a good sign, but okay. So then we go back to the gate. I message Res and ask to be space protected on the morning flight. They do it, I can see it in my app. Get to the gate and they hold us for 25min as maintenance tries to resolve. Call the 100k line, yep, you are space protected, no worries. Just call us when it gets cancelled. Then they cancel and this is where is all goes down hill. I get rescheduled no less than 8 times. Counter agent is like...you were never confirmed. She was obviously inexperienced. Uhm...2 different agents and I had seat assignments. Want to try again? The last time it puts me on a flight that auto has a 3 hour delay due to crew. Then another itinerary randomly appears on the reservations. So I have two completely different flights now booked. None of these remotely work so I finally throw in the towel and book Delta. Then the hotel voucher email cant provide any hotels. Won't book, and eventually no space. So now Im forced to book a hotel on my own. Go to leave...and its $100 for Uber/Lyft to go 1 mile. Guess I'm walking at midnight. I really remotely question why I bother with 100k at the moment. This has just been a complete and under disaster and the counter agents are just like...oh we are sorry. I think the final ironic icing was the..we are sorry..heres a $100 certificate that just arrived.....

djp98374

I’m confused.

whrn was the original flight?
ehrn was the rebooked flights?
where did you spend the night?

on uber/Lyft…what time was it and did you consider using a taxi?

jjclancy

The $100 cert sounds like it might have offset the Uber. Do you not have a credit card that would reimburse it as well as the hotel?

There are airports where getting from the gate to the curb is at least a mile of walking, at any hour of the day.

rune87

So to clarify a few points now that Ive slept.

Original Flight was AS1199. SAN-SEA. We went MX about an hour after we first taxied to the Runway. I had proactively reached out to AS to get space protected as everything out of SAN was generally full for today (Monday). 2 different agents confirmed I was good. New routing was SAN-SFO-SEA.

We deboard. Auto rebooker takes over.
I get booted out of my early flights that were confirmed and seat assigned.
I then get SAN-SFO-SEA at a much later time.
Then SAN-PDX-SEA
Then SAN-SFO-SEA with a long layover
Then SAN-SFO-SEA with a flight thats delayed 3 hours

Pretty much flights kept changing over the course of an hour. Nothing would lock in. Ticket counter told me the other reps had never confirmed me. 100k line said yes it was confirmed and that the desk messed it up. I ultimately ended up with 4 flights tied to my record with multiple departures and connections. Their system would say one thing, tickets would print out different. Mind you its like 11pm at night now. Nobody could make out heads or tails of what flight I should be on. I said screw it and booked an early morning Delta flight home at that point.

They send me an email for hotel selection, except no hotels were available. Thats where I had to go out of band to book a seperate one.

Airport was congested. Uber was a seperate issue, but just icing on the cake. Taxi was a 90 minute wait.

olouie

Alaska’s auto rebook really needs some changes. It will override agents bookings and do really strange things, especially if you got upgraded - it tries to protect that which is night but at the expense of more logical direct flights this turning simple 2-3 hour flights into 12-14 hour ones.

rune87

I've noticed this, but I've never seen the autobook go so haywire. Normally its one rebook and then the agents can take over. I ended up with 8 different flight changes before it gave up.

rune87

Well..another final fun note to this. Upon landing in Seattle, I was notified that my SFO-SEA flight had been delayed from 9am to 12pm. And I now had a boarding pass in the app as well. The ticket was cancelled at 715am this morning. So another hour on the phone with CS and it was finally handled and cancelled, shortly before departure. I really would love to know if this was system, training, combination of both. I feel so bad for everyone left on the terminal floor last night that didnt have the resources to navigate all of the issues tied to this.

djp98374

When did you finally fly out of San and land in sea?

the uber thing is because they game demand near airports to spike the price. This has been reported extensively all over the country where drivers collude and dhot of their availability till flights come in and watch the prices go up then turn their availability on to get the higher rates.

I’ve had my share of flight cancelations on different airlines. I’ve usually had better experiences that that on rebooking.

MY worst one was during the super cold Christmas/ New Years period that affected flights thru Chicago and minneapolis. I had booked a flight back originally on southwest. They gave me the chance to rebook, I did. Then that got cancelled. Their next available was 3-4 days later so I rebooked on delta. Original booking was thru Detroit to Seattle. Flights in were delayed so they cancelled early am flights due to crew rest. Then they had them go after they were cleared to fly to Detroit but I missed my connection. Then delta agent in Detroit booked me to SLC with standby on the evening flights with a certain seat on the am flight. That evening I had 2 flights i could get heading out of slc after landing. One was too tight with getting back with rechecking, then TSA, to flight. I was able to get a seat on the late flight.

GW McLintock

I have to agree in that AS does not handle IROPS well. Earlier this year I had a mileage run planned and due to a mechanical delay misconnected in SEA after the first of five legs. They could not get me anywhere in Alaska that day, and with the trip in vain, the only way they could get me home was 8+ hours later via SAN requiring a transcon redeye. I got 2500 miles as a "goodwill gesture" but then had to fight for over a month to get a refund, up to and including initiating a dispute with the credit card. The whole experience really soured my view of them... if they didn't have such a good FFP I would just switch to AA (and I still might next year).

It's terrible that you had this experience and that worries me if the higher tiers are even worth it.

-J.

Xrayman

Sorry to hear of your frustration. Yeah had similar experiences and have learned that as a 75K (no 100k status in 2019) it was best for me to just let the system do its thing and not “try” to help the system. When Ive tried to help the system it just screwed it up. It’s even worse when it’s with the family. When I’ve got the family we’ve had to just suck it up as getting home in a timely manner was a higher priority.

rune87

I gave up on Alaska and shelled out for a 735am departure on Delta and got into Sea at 10am.

jashah

I recently had a flight from SAN cancelled the night before and a flight from LAX delayed 2.5 hours. The first resulted in a downgrade from F to Y and a circuitous route home and the second a missed connection with no options on AS until the next day so I ended booking on another airline.

I’ve been loyal to AS for years but it’s getting harder to justify flying on them with the recent issues I have experienced.

Flyertalker001342

The question would be whether it's worth having status on AS and flying AS, or if it makes more sense to have status with another OW carrier and flying AS.

I've made my own choice in that I fly way more miles with BA, even if I fly more flights with AS. For me, I want BA status and will fly AS using my BA status. I am therefore going to let my MVP Gold status on AS lapse this year and will continue on with OWE status from BA.

I'll lose the rare free upgrade on AS and the nearly unusable MVP Gold Upgrades (no big loss on the latter). It will cost me a few hundred dollars to buy up the chain on my AS flights on those few occasions when I didn't do so anyway.

Since I usually book front of cabin anyway (at least on AS), I don't think there will be a perceptible difference.

olouie

Crediting BA flights to AS with the current bonuses in premium cabin is just too good to pass up. Getting 50K RDM for a $2K business class flight is just amazing.

frankvb

Absolutely agreed if you compare it with BA earning/burning rates AS is far ahead. And re-qualifying for BA Gold (OWE) would be an uphill struggle due to the tier point system compared to reaching 75K for me. When I lived in Europe I was BA Gold for years but flew BA long-haul PE a lot for work, and the premium cabin redemption/upgrade Avios multipliers were much better.