I recently booked a non stop trip from NYC to Europe through my travel agent at a very low price and it was ticket by Delta. About a week later I got a letter from him saying that Delta changed the flight on the outward leg to a connection flight thru another US hub. The other flight was not changed. The new departure is about 4 hours earlier but the arrival time is about the same.

I did a check and saw that the original nonstop flights were still available but now were appreciably higher priced. I am sure that my change was done because the airline would like to sell my seat at a higher price. Can they do this? Isn't a ticketed reservation something that is a final deal when the flight is not cancelled?

If anyone has had a similar experience, I would appreciate hearing how they handled this.

Just contact delta and ask to switch back. Your flight was probably changed and then reinstated.

No. During schedule changes, it's very common for a flight to be cancelled and then recreated (sometimes with a different flight number or a different aircraft). Usually that's pretty seamless, but sometimes the rescheduling system is too fast and tries to be helpful by rebooking people before the flight gets recreated. The system is often dumb and unhelpful, but it's not malicious and it's not trying to make money.

If you booked thru DL, they'd fix it for you without any problem. But you'll have to go thru your travel agent instead, hopefully they should be just as accommodating but who knows.

I agree with Mountain's post.

I would add that I think you can pay DL $50 to take over the ticket. That way they can deal with the issue without having to go through the travel agent. Depending on the TA, and your relationship with them, it might be worth the $50 (which is basically covering the discount the give the TA for selling the ticket).

DL should be able to fix it as long as seats are available on the original route.

They cant take over though if it's a BULK fare. I mention since OP mentions booking through TA and getting a really low price.

Travel agents know the rules and should be happy to help get the customer on the flight they want without the customer needing to go to Delta.

If it's an OTA, all bets are off.