In the space of a week I was 'accidentally' removed from two flights (actually five segments on two separate trips):

#1 - We were moved off of our homebound flights (HNL-IAH-AUS) and moved to flights for which we were waitlisted (HNL-IAH-AUS), but they moved us to flights on a *different day*! I only found out because I randomly called to check if we had, by any chance, been moved-over to the other flight. No explaination was offered or given.

#2 - I was completely removed from my entire return trip (BTR-IAH-AUS) and only found out when I went to check-in online!


#1 - Color - I had to spend about 2 hours of my vacation time getting it fixed. They got us back on the original flights, but we ended-up in a limited reclinine back-row (BF seat). I told them no way, it was their mistake fix it. It took three calls of them telling me it was impossible to move us back to the original seat, which they finally did in about 5 minutes when I made it clear I would not drop the issue. I would have just stayed an extra day in Hawaii, but had a meeting I had to be back for.

#2 - Color - I was dropped from my return flights because I skipped the first outbound segment. Apparently, that's the way it works. Unfortunately, I was concerend about that and called CO and asked before I booked my next ticket (which cut out that segment) and the agent said no problem and did not warn me. I also told the gate agent who took my boarding pass on my first (originally second) outbound flight. He said it was not big deal and would not cause any issues...How can two CO employees wrongly advise me about something so important.

I'd add to all this that many of the airport and airplane crew I've encountered the past couple of weeks have been downright surley. My wife and I made a game of trying to get the attendent (in F) to try and smile or say "you're welcome" just once on our LAX-IAH flight. We failed...

What's up with CO!?!?!? Did I just get lucky or are others experiencing more problems recently?

Interestingly enough, I asked an agent what she thought. She did not say I just had a streak of bad luck. She actually said that things like this are becoming more common at CO with people traveling more, employees under more stress, etc.

I fly a fair amount (aprox 140 CO segments last year) and did not have as many issues as I've had in the past few weeks...

Any thoughts?

Skipping a segment will almost always cause the rest of your reservation to cancel. There is no mystery here. It happens automatically. All of the agents should know this. Perhaps the agents you spoke with did not understand what you told them you had done?

I've never heard of flights being changed like yours in #1 without you being notified. Only time my flights were automatically changed like that is due to a schedule change that would have resulted in a mis-connect. Do you have all your proper alerts set up on CO.Com? If so, you should have gotten an email or phone call about the change. I have those set up, but recently haven't gotten my alerts.

Regarding #2, xyzzy is right. Been a policy like that for years. If you don't begin your trip, you can't finish it. Where the real trouble comes is when you get moved to another airline and the GA doesn't properly update the system and your return is cancelled. Had this happen a couple times and ended up once getting a $500 voucher for an involuntary bump out of it

I was pretty clear with both of them and expressed my concern (because I vaguely remembered reading something about this...). Guess I just encoutered he wrong people.

I have all my alerts set. I was never alerted on a waitlist change, though I was alerted for 'regular' flight changes (e.g. - flight time changed). Incedentally, they made two flight changes that caused a 35 minutes connection and an **8 minute connection** and I had to call and have those changed manually right before we left because they were not (re)changed automatically on their end.

lastly, when I say waitlist, I should have specified, I was waitlisted because I used a reward and couldn't originally get on the flight I wanted (using a standard reward).