PTahCha

Was scheduled to fly HPN - TPA. About 20 hours prior to the flight, got an e-mail stating that "Your departure city has been changed." Instead of flying out of HPN, the flight is now departing out of SWF, which is over 60 miles away. Worse, the return flight is still going back to HPN, and B6 does not have regular service between SWF and TPA.

The first call to customer service was a complete failure - the supervisor refused to change departure point to BDL, because it's not a "sister city" (her words, not mine) to NYC area airports, and would only reaccomodate from JFK or EWR, both of which are significantly farther coming from CT. Had to HUCA, and they were able to accommodate on the second call.

After a bit of digging, I found out that the inbound aircraft was diverted to SWF due to weather issues in NYC. Instead of cancelling the flight, or rerouting the plane back to HPN, B6 just forced everyone to depart out of SWF instead.

Out of my 20 years of flying as a traveler, I have never seen a change of departure point this close to flight time. Is this common?

Out of my Element

Back in February, my wife was supposed to fly home from San Diego. 4 hours or so before flight time she was notified the flight was leaving from Long Beach, instead.

Was nice for her as she was already IN Long Beach . . . B6 did bus passengers to LGB from SAN, so she saved the r/t drive.

Perhaps B6 will bus you from HPN to SWF? I'm sure you're not the only one with this issue.

airplanegod

That is really odd. A CT resident myself, I would be absolutely mad unless they planned on busing you from HPN to SWF. I'd also argue that BDL is a "sister city" due to the fact people like me either fly out of HPN or BDL.

mikeef

Agreed, and this situation seems really unusual. When I've been on flights that have had issues, minor or major, customer service has bent over backwards to help. And this one is clearly major. No way they should have given you any trouble at all. In fact, the nice thing to do would have been to offer you compensation for the extra driving and costs involved.

Mike