DL agent interlines bag to AS and also cancels AS itinerary
 

This was a doozy.

Had/have two itineraries today, one on delta from INL to MSP and then AS from MSP to SEA. Had a confirmed upgrade on AS when I checked in yesterday.

This morning in INL the DL agent interlined my bag through to SEA. Everything seemed fine.

Got to MSP and checked the Alaska app and saw that my SEA itinerary had disappeared. Called the gold line and the agent was as befuddled as I was. After a decent hold and her investigation it turned out that Delta had somehow cancelled my AS itinerary! So my bag had a ticket to Seattle but not me.

Luckily there was still space on the flight to SEA, albeit in coach. The AS agent rebooked me, and rewaitlisted me, though of course the odds are basically nil.

AS agent said she had never seen this before, and neither have I! I didn't even know that cancelling my next itinerary was even possible when setting up an interlined bag. So good service from AS agents as usual, but delta - wow, you really suck.

a) INL is Connection station
b) It appears you were on separate tickets. In which case, you were not entitled to a through check in the first place --

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...ry-2016-a.html

What does that have to do with the OP's post? They weren't complaining about the bag (it got checked through) but that their AS ticket was cancelled somehow by Delta.

Neil

:confused::confused::confused:

Totally not what the OP was about.

Alaska sells INL-MSP-SEA with a codeshare on the DL segment, so it could be purchased as a single ticket.

The "Delta" agent likely not being a Delta employee certainly is relevant, though not an excuse.

Yes, I know this - I had (wanted) to use DL miles to buy the INL-MSP leg, and used $ to buy the AS leg to SEA, hence the two itineraries. While buying one ticket should have solved this problem, this was not the cause of the problem. In other words, somewhat irrelevant.

I guess what surprised me, in addition to the incompetence, was that it was even possible to fat finger something while setting up an interlined bag that would cancel an entire itinerary on a different airline. Seems like either gross, gross incompetence, and/or a really poorly designed system interface.

You know, I wonder if the DL system allows someone to build a second leg as a standby.

It'd work like this: INL-MSP (DL Conf ABCDEF, paid with DL miles), MSP-SEA would be built as a second, standby leg on ABCDEF, showing the AS flight number. The agent would print the tag, then cancel the second leg. Since you're confirmed on the first leg, the tag wouldn't be printed with "Standby" on it.

I'm wondering if the agent did this, then cancelled the actual AS reservation instead of the standby leg. This is how you check bags on WN when having two reservations. I have no idea how the DL system works, but I wouldn't be surprised if something like that caused the thing to get messed up.

So if the OP had not been able to get a seat on the original flight, would Delta have paid for hotel/meals and other compensation?

Since the original flight was DL, and the DL agent apparently made the error, we'll move this to the DL forum. To the OP, what was the origin?

~beckoa, co-moderator AS MP

Trip originated in International Falls.

Did Alaska or Delta tell you that Delta cancelled your itinerary?

If Alaska: Did you consider that Alaska may have told you it's the other airline's fault because they either don't know how it happened, or they do know and wanted to save face?

I guess one possibility is that it's past of a vast Delta conspiracy to keep Alaska out of the parade and Qatar passengers trapped on a 380.

Another possibility is that the agent made a mistake. I can recall a number of those in my years. One where a Crown Room agent checked where I was on the upgrade list while also deleting me from the list. The gate agent was able to fix it but somewhat inconvenient.

I'm guessing it was the latter. Mistakes annoy me. But they are part of life. Shena is far more insidious and far more worthy of a complaint IMHO.

So you could shoot Delta a note. You could first thank the agent for helping you interline a bag which was of assistance and perhaps something she wasn't supposed to do. You could then mention the error issue. Delta might give you a few miles.

Or Delta might say thanks for the heads up - we will find that agent and make sure she knows not to do that again. And it may be that, as Widgets noted, the source of the error is not as clear as it seems.

Or you could just send a note to Alaska and ask them how you lost your upgrade and see if maybe they will shoot you a few miles. It sounds like you prefer Alaska so maybe those would be more valuable.

When I worked for US, all you would have to go is go into the PNR and "HK sell" the segment. As opposed to doing the usual segment sell (which would take away from available inventory on the OAL segment), you could simply long sell it with the status designator "HK1". We were unable to list someone as "standby" on an OAL.