jlemon

Back on March 15, I had booked r/t F tickets for my girlfriend and I to Hawaii with a standard award of 80K miles per person. Routing is LFT-IAH-HNL. I'm a Plat Elite.

The one "fly in the travel ointment", so to speak, was an early flight from LFT to IAH at 6:45am on CoEx. Our connecting flight to HNL is 73, which meant about a four hour layover at IAH. So, I had waitlisted us on the next COEx flight to IAH.

Checked our res on CO.com today and saw the waitlisted COEx flight had cleared. Noting the "call res to reissue tix" message, I did just that.

The nice lady res agent quickly took care of this. I then asked, "Ma'am, this change has not affected our other flights, has it?" She assured me that all was well.

I then checked our modified res on CO.com and discovered that we were no longer in the 764 front cabin on flt. 73 but were now in Y with no seat assignments.

So I called res back and talked with another very nice lady agent who initially had no idea what had happened. 45 minutes later, with the assistance of a supervisor, we were restored to the front cabin on flt. 73 in our original seats.

So what the heck happened here with regard to us losing our F seats?

Mothura

Think you should call the webhelp folks to point out what happened
800 300 1547

BearX220

Good for you for going back right away to double-check your itinerary online and spotting the lapse. Not enough people do that; everyone should.

channa

+1. Always double check any itin after any changes. And also throughout your trip if you can. You never know what can happen.

If I had to guess, the agent was careless and whacked the whole outbound before realizing just the first segment was to be rebooked. Then, she realized her mistake #1, but did not realize you were in BF before, and just put you in Y.

At least this was on CO metal, so they could easily restore it. If it were on partner, it would have been more difficult (or costly) to do so.

jlemon

Roger that concerning checking the itinerary! I make it a point to do so on an on-going basis, especially after a change. And I did point out to the first agent that I spoke with that we were in the front cabin IAH-HNL. Perhaps she just didn't pick up on this......

channa

It's possible that she realized her goof, and then booked you into whatever was available (Y) because she'd have to alert someone to it to get it forced back into BF.

Not sure what the culture is over at the CO call center, but I do get the sense that the agents are heavily scrutinized. If that's the case, why fess up to an issue if it may go unreported later?

LAXOGG

Maybe so in some instances but an agent would have to be really dumb to think this one wouldn't be reported!

channa

Why not? Note that I said not reported, I didn't say not noticed.

Customer would definitely notice, at checkin or at the airport, and it's possible the airport would waitlist him and all would be well. I don't think a GA would have the time or inclination to research what happened and/or report it. In fact, I think that this not being reported would have been highly likely.

jlemon

With only 20 F seats on the 764 IAH-HNL, I think we would have been completely out of luck had I not noticed this immediately.....those particular front cabin reward seats are a bit difficult to come by, especially using the minimum miles required. Hence my booking last March.

jlemon

Well, I thought I had this situation under control....

Until this morning.

Received an e-mail from CO informing me of a "schedule change". In a nutshell, flt. 73 IAH-HNL on 10/2 has now been cancelled. And according to our new itinerary, our connecting flight was arriving in IAH after our flight to HNL had departed. Oh, by the way, we were now back in coach with no seat assignments. Again.

At least the agent answered the phone promptly. And it only took about 30 minutes to resolve this latest problem. We are now on flt. 1 in F IAH-HNL the next day on 10/3.

Of course, I then had to rearrange our connecting interisland flights on HA since they were on a separate record locator. HA answered the phone promptly, too, when I called for seat assignments. This didn't take too long....

You know, it really should not be this difficult....and what's gonna happen next?!? I'm thinking about getting a new bumper sticker: "KAUAI OR BUST!"

mike_plat

Did they say why they decided to cancel a flight from the flagship hub to HNL on a Saturday 3 months from now? Why couldn't they put you on CO1 on 7/2 instead?

jlemon

I asked the agent about this and she said she had no idea why they cancelled CO 73 three months out. Perhaps the forecasted pax load was light?

Being aware of CO 1, I then tried to switch us to this flight. However, the response was "no first class reward seats available on this flight, sir". In fact, it appears CO 1 is completely sold out in the front cabin on 10/2. Perhaps revenue F customers on CO 73 got switched to CO 1? So we will now delay our trip by one day.

The mileage in my OP account now appears to be all screwed up as well; however, I'll give that situation several days or so to settle before I call......