LHR/MEL/Europe FF

This has been my experience with IRROPS for awards issued by US/AA/UA. They don't really seem to care who issued it they will take complete control in IRROPS. For Asia my experience is limited on awards for CX/KA issued by AA. Again CX/KA have been more than willing to make multiple changes without refering to AA.

I guess TG is an exception. Thankfully (fingers cross) I haven't had a situation to find out.

glennaa11

I had a somewhat similar issue last fall. Trip was WAW-ORD-IAD booked with Lifemiles on Lot connecting to UA. About 36 hours before departing WAW I received an email message from LO noting that my outbound was canceled. Rather than providing me with a new itinerary I was instructed to call their NY phone number. After spending forever on hold I decided to just go out to the airport to deal with a live person. (It's a relatively quick 25 minute train ride to the airport from town). However once there it was a nightmare. The woman at their customer service counter didn't appear to know how to deal with the issue and kept disappearing into the back office to talk to some one else. Eventually she offered me an unrealistic connection via LAX which included a red eye on AA to get back to DC. I told her that wasn't acceptable. I had researched better connection options including on LH and SK. In the end she threw up her hands and told me LA was the best she could do and that anyway I should call Avianca since they booked the ticket. This made no sense to me since LO was the responsible party. She then told me that they couldn't do anything until 24 hours before the flight that was canceled. It was clear that I was not going to get anywhere with her so I called it day. I did try calling LM and was told there was nothing they could do and that LO would need to fix the problem they created.

The next day I went back to the airport to try again. And managed to get an agent who was exceptionally helpful. She basically told me she would give me whatever flight I wanted. At first we were working on LH but I really preferred the SK flight via CPH since it was a better product and she told me no problem. Took less than 15 minutes to take care of the issue. But it caused me a lot of unnecessary stress and wasted a good chunk of my time dealing with the first agent.

So, I guess the moral of my story is that some airline agents are clueless and others are gems. And sometimes even if you do exactly what you should you get nowhere...as you experienced with TG. At some point you need to push the "supervisor" button. I think in your situation I would have asked to speak to some one in authority to help me once the first person told me they wouldn't do what they were supposed to.

It doesn't matter if it's an award or a paid ticket. I had a problem in YYZ a few years ago with UX canceling a flight after we had boarded due to a mechanical issue that was part of an itinerary booked on Orbitz that included AC. United refused at first to take responsibility for rebooking me. And told me to call Orbitz. I even tried getting help from AC but they (correctly) told me that this was United's problem to fix. It was quite frustrating but eventually I got UA to do their job the next morning. Haven't flown UA/UX since.

LHR/MEL/Europe FF

I think the handling by LO sounds right to me.

If changes occur before the ticket is within airport control (usually around 24 hours before departure), the correct course of action is to go back to the ticket issuer (Lifemiles). This would have been the case at 36 hours.

Once the ticket is within airport control, agents have pretty much unlimited ability to do whatever they need to do to get you to your destination. That sounds pretty much what happened here.