Bonehead

Was flying MAF-DFW-DEN today (12:55 pm MAF-DFW flight) and saw the delays at DFW start to mount, including my inbound equipment from DFW to MAF. Decided to take the 1:47 pm nonstop on UA, which was a good decision because my MAF-DFW flight is in the air as I write this (8:40 pm CDT). My original DFW-DEN flight has left, and all later DFW-DEN flights have been canceled.

Will I owe the $200 change fee?

jridge

It sounds like you just no-showed for the flight - is that correct? If so, no change fee, but the rest of your itinerary is automatically cancelled by default.

sjpmurph01

If you just no-showed for your flight, then not only would your ticket have automatically cancelled, but you will have lost all remaining value on it.

If you actually cancelled your ticket with AA, of your on volition before your flight was actually cancelled, I don't believe you're entitled to any flexibility from AA. But it may be worth filing a refund request, and you may get lucky.

Stripe

You played that one badly. You should have called AA, who may have booked you over to UA and left your AA return intact. Or let you cancel with a full refund if it seemed likely you were not going to make it to DEN on AA.

Exec_Plat

I'd say maybe... if you sing a tune of 'i tried to get through but it was 2 hrs on the phone' they might buy it.

Of course speaking to AA at the time would have been the best move.

Or better yet, have your travel agent do it....

brodielayne

Travel Agents still exist? Why?

JDiver

Because knowledgeable ones can have your back, may have access to certain discounts, etc.

Exec_Plat

Lemme guess... you dont do 200k plus miles a year. Try keeping track of that level of travel.

I dont really care about 'deals'- he can book anything I can find, and can find things like mixing airlines that are very hard to construct. (not having to putz around with kayak, etc) When things go south, he can rebook and handle, even when I am in the air. As an agency I get 24hrs cancellation for any ticket. On top of AAs 24hr hold.

and he can do things with bookings that AA would flatly refuse. I'll leave that at that.


All for $35 a ticket. He gets to keep all my hotel/car commissions. If one trip out of ten is a cluster, its worth it.

For price/leisure travelers, the occasional business flyer, sure probably dont need a TA.

Bonehead

So when I made the decision to take the 1:47 pm UA flight it was 1 pm, and there was a long line at the one AA gate at MAF. Strike 1. I called the AA Gold desk and the recording said that I'd get a call back in about 1.5 hours. Strike 2. I attempted to cancel online..."this function is currently not available. Try again later". Tried 5 times. No luck. Strike 3. Looked for a weather waiver on AA.com. Nope. Strike 4.

Emailed AA customer support from my seat on the UA Devil's Chariot (the whole reason I was flying AA was to avoid the ERJ-200) complaining that I couldn't cancel on line and that the phones were tied up, and got a reply relatively quickly from a rep stating that she had canceled my flights.

Meanwhile, there was a woman at the UA gate going to BOS who had been put on the UA flight by AA (connection in DEN to BOS), which I would assume does cost AA some dough. By proactively canceling the AA flight and making my way to DEN on my own I think I saved AA some cash and saved myself a lot of aggravation.

The irony is that AA will likely charge the change fee since 1) I didn't go through them (of course, that was impossible if I wanted to get home that day unless I drove the 10 hours), and 2) There was no waiver in place (for some inexplicable reason, given the utter disaster that was DFW yesterday).

I'd be interested in anyone's further thoughts given these additional facts.

bmchris

You should have tried the AA OSO hotline that deals just with significant air delays rather than regular reservations.

Bonehead

Update: Called the Gold line and asked about this reservation (really didn't think I'd get through due to yesterday's mess).

Agent said I have the full value of the reservation to use going forward.

Sorry I wasted everyone's time

p.s. The reason I was hot to trot on this was because I'm doing my expenses today and needed to figure out what to bill the client.

iadisgreat

Glad it worked out. Next time try twitter too...they are worth every penny they are being paid by AA and can work magic without ever being spoken to!

869

Agreed. I DM'd a request to cancel a delayed flight last night and included a picture of the AA.com error message. They confirmed my request within 15 minutes.

Sometimes they do get backed up and have slower response times than usual but I think the twitter team is one of the best CS tools they've got.

JonNYC

Absolutely-- tailor made for this kinda thing.

Glad it worked out.