Newbie questions, I hope this is an OK place to post this.

Some time back I had a trip booked with Delta, that went BOS - CDG (on Air France), CDG - AMS (on Air France), AMS - BOM (on KLM). The day before the flight, I was notified by Air France that the BOS - CDG flight's schedule had changed. It would now arrive at CDG too late for me to catch the flight to AMS. The notification came about 30 hours before the flight departure time. The flight had been booked through the travel agency we use at work (FCM).

In my nervous haste, I did not call FCM to try to get rebooked, which I think (?) would have been the right thing to do since the ticket was booked through them. Instead I called Delta, since the tickets were issued on Delta (and not AF nor KLM). The agent I talked to was very pleasant, and said he'd try to rebook me, but asked me repeatedly if I was sure I wanted to rebook and whether I had any car, hotel, or cruise reservations also attached to the same itinerary. "If I take control of the ticket now, your travel agency will not be able to make changes to the hotels, cars, etc. Normally we only take control of the ticket 24 hours or closer to the flight", was roughly what he said. I told him to go ahead, and he booked me on an earlier flight (on Delta) BOS - AMS, allowing me to catch the AMS - BOM flight with plenty of time. It was good that he did, as it turned out that there were hardly any other seats available for the day of travel and if I'd delayed calling I might have been out of luck entirely.

So it worked out well for me, but curiosity leads me to ask, what exactly is entailed by "control" of a ticket? I had the vague idea it had to do with when the airline or the airport gate agents can start assigning seats for a flight. But what the agent said to me suggests that it extends beyond flights and includes things like car rentals and such if they were booked together? Also the agent implied that those would all be blocked for the travel agency if he took control of the ticket, but clearly he was unable to tell himself whether or not there were car or hotel reservations attached to the booking. So what would have happened if I had had a car rental, for example - would it have gone into a black hole where nobody, not the travel agency, nor the airline, nor the car rental company would be able to see it? And if that's the case, how can an airline get control of a ticket 24 hours before the flight - what happens to the non-flight portions of the booking? Or was the agent simply making stuff up for me? :-)

What is the advice for such situations in the future - call the travel agency and hope they have access to other seats that might be available for rebooking, or call the airline (who may access to more seats?? or not?), and how does the 24-hour cut-off play into all this?

Minor question - when Air France notified me that the BOS - CDG flight would be delayed, should they not have tried to rebook me anyway? I think with the revised schedule I had about 35 minutes to catch the CDG-AMS flight. It's surprising that this did not trigger any automatic consideration to rebook since it seems too little time to transit clearing EU immigration, etc., at CDG. Even on the phone, the agent had to look at the revised schedule for a bit before admitting that it "seemed too tight" - is there not some standard criterion for minimum connection times that would be flagged by their software?

1. Other than IRROPS on the day of travel, when it is the operating carrier of the affected flight which handles rerouting, if you book through a TA, it is the TA who must handle the rebooking.

2. If you had purchased the ticket from DL, it would have been DL's responsibility up until the day of travel at which point it becomes AF's responsibility.

Sometimes you will receive a tentative reroute and sometimes not. It does not really matter as you need to either accept the tentative reroute or propose something else.

In this specific case, the distinction between AF and DL is somewhat merged because DL handled customer service for AF in North America and AF handles it for DL in Europe. You nonetheless call the relevant carrier and are transferred based on location.

In this case, the DL agent gave you good information. If the TA had handled any other aspect of your travel, including other tickets, hotels, and the like, having DL take over the ticket might have caused significant problems. As a general matter, best to call the TA and have them handle.

Yes, the "correct" thing to do is to contact your travel agent/agency. Airlines and other travel companies pay travel agencies commissions in part because it reduces labor costs. In theory, travel agencies are solely responsible for handling any and all aspects of that ticket. Often, you'll hear the phrase "the travel agency owns the ticket" and is therefore in charge.

As Often1 notes, on the day of travel, that restriction is lifted.

Admittedly, it's been quite a few years since I worked in a GDS system. GDS stands for Global Distribution System. These GDS connect the separate computer systems run by different companies to create a network.

I used to work at the Central Reservations Office of a travel company. We sold multiple products through packages: hotels, airfare, car rentals, and attraction tickets. We sold directly to consumers as well as through travel agencies. All of our products were bookable via those GDS.

The Delta agent you spoke to was not making anything up. Once an airline or other travel provider takes control of ticket, that action essentially locks the record. The travel agent will be able to see the record but will be unable to make changes.

In that situation, other companies (car rentals, hotels) not be affected. They only get the part of the itinerary that deals with their business. They wouldn't even know if an airline "took control" of the overall reservation.

As long as the travel agent doesn't need to make any changes to the car rental or hotel, it doesn't matter. But, if they did need to change or cancel, the only way to do it would be to pick up the phone and call. Calling always takes longer than making a change via the GDS. Sometimes, it can take a long time to get through to a person if the hotel/car rental company is busy.

Trust me when I tell you, travel agents get rightfully angry when a company takes over a reservation without cause.

Whenever schedule changes happen, the travel agency is notified via GDS. Frankly, I'd question why you were notified by the airline and not the travel agency. Although I suppose Air France might be offering super special service by contacting you the instant your itinerary changed, I think that's probably unlikely.

Chances are decent that your travel agency knew about the schedule change for hours or even days before Air France notified you. As your flight approached, the airline decided to contact you directly because it knows fixing a problem the day prior is easier than trying to find a solution at check-in.

If you run into a similar problem in the future, I'd do the following. 1) Definitely call your travel agency first. 2) If they aren't responsive, call the airline. 3) After the trip, consider finding a new travel agency.

No. That's the responsibility of the travel agency.

I'm not an expert on the technical issues here, but I'd add that DL usually charges a fee of about $50 to take over (before the day of departure) a ticket that was issued by a travel agent. Your employer could have resisted reimbursing this fee as in principle you should have contracted the travel agent to fix the problem. OTOH, if the timing of the trip was important, hopefully the employer would understand your concern and decision to take the initiative and solve the problem since your corporate travel agent didn't seem to be doing anything here. I'd agree with the suggestion to fire the travel agent.

There are minimum connecting times (MCTs) established for connections (on the same ticket/PNR) at major airports, depending somewhat on the carrier(s) and nature of the route. If MCT is violated, you have an illegal connection and the ticket shouldn't be sold/issued; check in (or bag check) should not be permitted if a schedule change (not an ordinary minor delay) causes MCT to be violated. The idea is that if you miss such legal connections, the delivering carrier that had the delay is responsible for rebooking you for free.

As a semi-related aside for the future, AF/KLM take control of tickets coming back from Europe at T-48, not at T-24 -- which is problematic if you are an FO/GM since it requires you to get manually assigned to C+ at CDG/AMS (because AF/KLM take control before the GM/FO window opens up to clear you automatically).

The TA/DL charge for taking over before T-24 is also dictated by your company's relationship with DL. When I book for work via our TA (AMEX GBT via Concur), I don't encounter any charges for DL to take over the ticket or process changes before T-24, however United does charge this fee (have been hit with it when doing cash upfares on UA -- where DL does not charge to take the ticket over and upfare me) so I think this is one of many things that can be negotiated depending on how much leverage your company/TA have.

And I do agree you should have been notified via your TA. I know when I've been upgraded at the PM window because I receive a MAJOR FLIGHT CHANGE email alert from AMEX GBT before the DL app sends me the upgrade notification ribbon on my phone -- and of course they send emails and texts when I've been delayed offering to assist me with re-booking (though 99/100 times it's faster and easier to go via the DL PM line)

I think you mean GM/FO not GM/PM window at the end of your first paragraph. PMs should clear into C+ if C+ "upgrade" inventory is available long before T-48.

You are correct that should be GM/FO window

Thanks for all the informative replies.

Interesting, and not surprising, really, since my experience with our company's travel agency has been that they are often somewhat passive when it comes to things like this, waiting for travelers to call them rather than the other way around. (As for the suggestion about firing them, unfortunately I have no say in this part of my company's practices.)

It was also mentioned Delta normally charges a fee for taking control of a ticket more than 24 hours before departure. No fee was charged in this case, but I'm unsure if that's because of any status I have with Delta, or the type of the ticket, or anything else. In any event I'm quite certain no fee hit me / the company. for this.

It doesn't surprise me that your travel agency isn't the best, Bandicoot. In my experience, really good corporate travel agencies can be hard to find.

For what it's worth, the major airlines are pretty good about empowering employees to use their judgement to waive fees.