Trip alert is risky especially when a delay is caused by an air traffic hold. There have been times when I got a trip alert and assumed I had more time to get to Newark, my home base, only to have the delay removed and nearly misseing a flight.

On the other hand in November I was in Beijing and had a huge delay, over 8 hrs, and was advised by trip alert. I delayed checking out of my hotel had an enjoyable day and evening, checked out at 10PM and headed to the airport for the 1:30AM flight (delayed from 5:30PM). I was praising Trip Alert that day. Of course I made an international call to CO to find out where the flight originated and what time it was actually was in the air just in case.

Just to reiterate my earlier comment. Have a flight tomorrow to IAH. Got a trip alert this morning. Had the usual "DCA-IAH....." header information. Then some text: "please ensure that your text settings are" and that was it. Poor implementation.

Bump.

Anyone notice improvements here?

I got a gate change page the other day, and was in shock.

Even my connecting flights worked (they never used to work).

I've been getting them fairly regularly. But they usually say "part 3 of 5" or something like that and some of the information is missing.

I would turn them off, but I never think about it until I get another one, and then I never have access...

I don't think I've received a TripAlert since sometime last summer, despite the fact that co.com still shows I'm signed up.

I had a flight cancelled yesterday and the only reason I knew was because I called to change to an earlier flight on my own...

No, it does not work consistently.

Yes channa, we have made some changes to TripAlert. The gate change alert, for example, was launched very recently. For those of you having problems receiving TripAlerts, there's a handful of possible explanations for this. Here are the most popular ones.

1. Bad contact information. Although this should really go without saying, inaccurate contact information is our most popular culprit when troubleshooting TripAlert issues
   
   
2. TripAlert preferences. Unless you've opted in to receive a TripAlert even when the flight is on time, you'll only receive it when your flight is delayed or cancelled
   
   
3. Sprint phones. We do have a known issue where Sprint is blocking our TripAlert messages. We're actively working with them to resolve this issue.
   
   
4. Delays and cancellations occuring with 30 minutes of departure. In it's current design, TripAlert does not notify of any delays or cancellations that are posted within 30 minutes of scheduled departure. We agree this should change, and it's on our calendar for this year.
   
   
5. Outage on our side. Our TripAlert servers have gone on the blink before, but it's extremely rare.

If you're not receiving TripAlerts, and it's not for one of the reasons listed above, please send me a PM with your details and we'll figure out what's the issue.

Thank you for these new features! It's great to have this type of information, especially for connecting flights, as soon as you land.

I pretty consistently get information for my originating flight. I cannot remember the last time I got information for my connecting flight.

Is this a feature or a bug?

I like the connecting flight info to be waiting when I turn on my BlackBerry on the taxi way. It lowers (or raises) my stress level on those 30 minute IAH connections.

I also like the new disclaimer on delayed flight notifications that say you should arrive at the airport based on your originally scheduled departure time.

Edit: Lawyer mode: on exact disclaimer language just came in:

As of 1:03 pm/16FEB, CO****/16FEB from *** gate C25 is expected to be delayed. Since the flight may be cleared to depart on-time, you must be at the gate based on the scheduled departure time of *:** pm. The flight is now estimated to arrive into IAH at *:** pm. This information is provided as a courtesy and must not affect the time you report to the airport. Info subject to change.

... and see it is working today!

Hi farenthold, thanks for your post. Currently it�s a feature. Except for gate change notifications, TripAlert doesn�t provide any updates for connecting flights. We do, however, plan to add this feature later this year.

CO's alerts are very unreliable. Half the time I don't get an alert at all.

AA, by comparison, is amazing. I always know about gate changes before the GAs do.

CoInsider great news!!! ^
I agree, It's rarely failed me, with the exception of a being notified of a flight delay just when I arrive at the airport.

Earlier this month, I got a trip alert at home at 11:00 at night for an easrly morning flight the next day. Bad WX at O'Hare had delayed inbound traffic, and the crew ran into mandatory crew rest issues so the departur (first flight out of O'Hare, 5:40 AM) was delayed until after 6:30 AM. This would cause a misconnection in IAH. I called the elite desk as a result of the tripalert and got protected on a later connecting flight after reviewing other options including CLE. Because I got the info early, they were even able to get me upgraded to first on a change that took place 18 hourbfore the flight was to leave. AWESOME!! BTW, unbelievably great elite agent at he SLC call center, she really knocked herself out to get me to my meeting in LAS on time!

--PP

Hi All,
I've come to rely on the Trip Alert emails to my Blackberry, especially early flights to know in advance the status and gate. Helps to know which security lane to use at EWR. They have been very reliable but I've always wondered why I don't get alerts on connections and now I know. Thanks Scott. I would love to see these added soon. If they are reliable it would really help to know where you need to go once you hit the ground, especially on tight connections or when the inbound flight is running late. Sometimes there's no CO agent meeting the flight or they are busy. A recent example was a few months ago I was traveling SJC-IAH-LGA and the first leg was diverted due to weather. Called CO Plat desk while refueling in Austin and they told me I would miss my connection in IAH and to see an agent when I landed in IAH. I bolted from the plane and my flight wasn't on the board and all lines were very long so I started to exit the airport thinking I was done for the night. Called the Elite desk only to learn my inbound plane/gate was my outbound LGA gate/plane. My first thought was why the Plat desk didn�t tell me this before. I was PO�d since I was running around trying to find out what to do, unnecessarily thinking about hotels, etc. Trip alerts could have avoided a lot of frustration and lack of information. To make matters worse I learned the hard way that LGA has a curfew so we flew to EWR and were bussed to LGA at about 4:30am. We were just dumped in EWR with little information on how to get the bus to LGA. It killed me since EWR is my base airport but the price was much higher and I was a good company guy and chose LGA just to stick with CO. Nothing like landing almost at sunrise and then heading in the opposite direction to go home. Sorry for the vent but the Trip Alert on connections would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Trip Alert seems to work well and consistently for me. It's saved me from turning in my rental car and then finding out that my flight had been delayed or cxld.