Agent Didn’t Actually Cancel Ticket…now no credit for No Show
 

Wife, Daughter and I flying ELP-ATL for my dad’s funeral.

wife takes I’ll and can’t fly. I tell the agent at the airport to cancel her ticket as she is ill. I was told I’d get the e-credit.

fast forward to today after I’ve returned. She was no showed and given no credit! $947 ticket.

do I have any recourse?

I’ve called and am in the queue. I have no status.

Did you look under her Skymiles account? It should show there. You won't get anything, the ticket is hers.

Even if doesn't show you can look it up using the eticket number. An ecredit is just a heading it covers unused etickets and CS vouchers.

DL hasn't imposed no-show on tickets since before CV19 due to long waits.

Unless you are ready to rebook,, there's no need to do anything right..

I was unaware that you actually had to cancel to get a credit. When did that become a rule?

The OP was at the airport with live agents, but since the website often doesn't allow a reservation to be canceled, and it can be difficult to get a living person on the phone, I have been under the impression that if a reservation went unclaimed and without checkin, the reservation would be automatically canceled at T minus 30 minutes.

Hasn't been enforce since CV19 hit.

Many, many years - a non-refundable ticket canceled due to no-show is voided and the coupon value is forfeit. As mentioned, they have been more lenient during the pandemic.

It has been corrected via messaging. She now has the credit.

but, to be clear, when she looked for the credit under her account, there was a message saying it was a no-show and would get no credit.

So, DL seems to be enforcing it again.

and, thanks for the responses. After a pretty emotional couple of weeks flying back and forth to be with my dad, then my wife getting sick, and the funeral, then this…I was expecting to have a fight on my hands. I’m happy to say it was dealt with quickly once I got to a real person at DL.
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...e9c3c8f22.jpeg

Some of these gates agents , esp ATL are useless and rather not help you or make things worse than actually assist you

I'm glad Delta is enforcing the no show penalty again. Flights are jam packed and expensive. Canceling when you know you aren't taking a flight opens up inventory for other passengers. Hopefully this also means Delta has hold times under control.

You're reading way too much into this.. They're not enforcing. Just if not canceled the system needs to be told to place as an "ecredit" vs it automatically happening.

Same thing happened to me - but I *did* take the flight. (I was the no-show, even though I was standing there)
It took the gate agents over an hour to sort it out - they had to create a new/separate PNR for me, pull my bags off the plane (international), completely un-do and re-do the passenger manifest, it was an epic mess.
Then they loaded my bags and we were off. Pilot claimed "radar sensor" was broken, maintenance tried to fix (no maint came on the plane, I was up front), they "jiggled it", and it was magically fixed.

Did I get credit? I used the ticket, so that part is different from you.
But the ATL Gate Agent comment I just quoted is 100% true.
Oh, and they're liars, too.

I think it does still automatically happen for the majority of cases (ticket remains open, noval isn't applied). However because they were in a PNR with people who did travel, the system can't handle that situation automatically. Short answer is, if the gate agent had divided the non-traveller into their own PNR, the system would have automatically left the ticket open for future use.

Long answer: the reservation consists of the itinerary stored in the PNR and the ticket for a set of flights. Both of these need to match for the reservation to be valid and allow travel on that ticket/itinerary. You can only have one itinerary in a PNR, and it must be the same for every passenger and all the tickets in that PNR. At the time a flight is closed out, every one holding a confirmed seat needs a coupon accounting for that confirmed space. If you've boarded the flight, the close out turns the coupon for that portion of the ticket to "used". Historically (and technically, currently), if you didn't board the flight, the close out turns the coupon for that ticket to "no value" (because you held a confirmed seat with a matching coupon in your ticket and no-showed). This is 1) to enforce the historic rules regarding loss of value for no-showing, but 2) acts as a safeguard against a free flight incase the coupon didn't get lifted when the passenger boards (stops the ticket having value even if the passenger did fly but for whatever reason this didn't get recorded.)

The process of preserving ticket value involves deleting the scheduled itinerary from the PNR (i.e. what a reservation agent would do if you call to cancel in advance), that way during the close out process for the flight, it won't try to find a coupon to invalidate since there is no confirmed booking (aka you're not on that flight). To automatically do this, presumably at flight close out, the system checks for any confirmed bookings that don't have the coupon lifted yet, and clears those itineraries, prior to running the sweep to change coupon statuses. The problem here comes back to being in the same PNR as people who were travelling - the system can't delete the itinerary because of the people travelling as that would involve dropping their confirmed status. As before, the itinerary in the PNR has to be the same for everyone in it, so it can't drop the confirmed booking for the non-traveller either. So the non-traveller still has a confirmed booking when the system then runs the sweep to change the coupon status, and therefore applies the no-value against the coupon since it sees it as a no show.

The automated solution to this would be to automatically divide out the no-show into their own PNR and then cancel the itinerary in the new PNR, so the coupon doesn't get caught in the flight close out. However they probably thought this was a relatively niche case (in the grand scheme, how often is only a portion of the passengers in a reservation going to not travel), and there is an easy manual work around to quickly divide the PNR (and/or restore the ticket value when the OP's situation happened), that it wasn't worth the additional changes to automatically divide someone out when this situation presented itself.

Can't speak to enforcement, as I always change tickets to a future date if unable to cancel online, but the historical no-show policy "officially" applies to all tickets issued on/after 31MAR21.

Change/Cancel Policy

It was added back to the fare rules, yes. However its not enforced, they're waiving it. Just like some airlines put change fees back in fare rules, but then are waiving it. I believe Mar 21 is when the system no longer just move the unused ticket to My Wallet ecredit.

All cancelling ahead of time does is help control IDBs. Those seats are NOT going out empty.

As we all know, the website will often not allow you to cancel a flight. And we certainly all know how difficult it can be to cancel by phone!

Whether you cancel ahead of time has absolutely zero impact on IDB. No one is going to be IDB'd until after the boarding deadline has passed, and the noshows who had confirmed seats have been dropped. So whether you cancel ahead of time, or cancel by no-showing, that seat will be filled before anyone is IDB'd.

Where cancelling ahead of time may have a marginal impact is in VDB's where the flight is so oversold beforehand, that they're offering to confirm the changed itinerary/compensation without waiting to the end of boarding to confirm whether they actually need your seat or not. IME, when a flight is oversold to that point is when they're making those changes before ever going to the gate (in which case I'm not sure if it is even considered a VDB to DOT since it was resolved way in advance). But for VDB's that go to the gate, cancelling ahead of time probably has minimal, if any impact, for the same reason as IDB. Generally VDB at the gate doesn't finalize until they know they need your seat, and to know that boarding needs to have ended so the no shows can be dropped, and they still need to be oversold, at which point they will use their VDB volunteers..