szg

I have booked two flights next year in January and February (Australia and South America), which consists of 8 segments each and four different carriers.

Now I receive every week an email, that there is a change.

Following changes I received:

- Departure time changed to 5 minutes earlier
- Arrival time changed to 35 minutes later.
- A changed flight, on which the departure time was changed to 5 minutes earlier, will now depart 10 minutes later
- ........

I thought the flight details are already in the system, because they are all bookable. But why do the carrier (LH, SQ, NZ, TP, LX, OS) change the details now every week ?

BristolTraveller

I'm getting the same thing on a relatively trivial LHR-FRA-SIN-SYD trip. I booked it back in February for November this year (boy, getting Z avails on SQ is hard work), and I have been bombarded with e-mail changes.

My wife has had the same with a LHR-SFO-LAS trip on UA she's doing too.

In all cases it's been 5 minutes tweaking of flight times here and there. I was rather hoping the SIN-SYD leg was getting tweaked to take advantage of an A380 operating it, but <sigh> it appears not.

Kiwi Flyer

There can be all sorts of reasons - change of a/c type adds or subtracts time, if delays experienced on route are more/less than anticipated, reshuffle a/c utilisation, daylight saving start or end, etc.

An upcoming award trip (5 flights) has so far had at least 6 schedule changes. Unfortunately I now get to my destination much later than originally planned (making for a very looong day) due to schedule changes forcing me onto a later flight.

marbe166

Don't complain when you recieve these e-mails. When I was going to TLS in April I had booked the itinerary ARN-MUC-TLS-DUS-ARN on LH. The booking was made over three months in advance. I did not recive any e-mails regarding schedule or itinerary changes. One day I was searching for available trips on my booked route and I then couldn't find my booked itinerary! It turned out that they had changed the departure time on the TLS-DUS leg to about 1 hr later and thus they screwed my connection in DUS. Without telling me! I was immediately on the phone to LH reservations and there I was told that they had rebooked me on a TLS-FRA-ARN route, leaving at VERY early in the morning (opposed to a noonish departure time to DUS)! That was not an acceptable solution to me, so they changed it to a TLS-MUC-ARN route instead, leaving just a little bit later.

QMConsultant

I would have been more than happy to receive an e-mail about the 7-hour preponement of my feeder flight from RDU to IAD in July, resulting in me having to stay another night in RDU, having to buy another ticket for RDU-IAD and arriving one day late back in the office. In the end, I got 15'000 miles compensation from LH (and all expenses I incurred for this incident) as LH failed to inform me of the change.

However, I would have preferred to be home on time!!

DownUnderFlyer

It certainly pays to keep an eye on your reservation details. Schedule changes are so common that complicated itineraries can suffer from just minor changes. Especially at airports which allow tight connections (MUC) a 10 minute change can make a huge difference.

SmilingBoy

On my recent trip to Canada, I had booked a ticket on AUA AirManager for BRU-FRA-YVR/YYC-YYZ/YYZ-FRA-BRU on LH (and the domestic flight on AC) on a non-full-fare ticket with oenalties (just before the real AUA AirManagaer was deactivated). A couple of months after the booking, the AC flight I had booked for YYC-YYZ was cancelled. I received an e-mail that they had rebooked me to another flight leaving 20 minutes earlier.

The interesting bit was that they offered to cancel the ticket with a full refund if the arrangements were not suitable. I found it interesting that they really offered this despite such a minor change in schedule!

SmilingBoy.

DLSTR

The reason that most airlines are doing, mostly minor, schedule changes right now is that winter timetable is just getting fixed. This is rather late, but some outside factors, e.g. slot conferences, etc, require this.

LH431

same here.

booked a ticket 3 month in advance(5 legs) and got one notification for a UA flight one month later. New departure time(5min), new flight number, new plane, new seat.

Tyrolean

I have booked MUC-BKK-MEL-AKL-LHR-MUC in November and get flight time changes every few days.
Obviously they adjust the winter timetables now.

DFW-SEN

Sometimes it also works in one's favour.... A few weeks ago I received an eMail notification that my HAM-MAN-SIN flight on LH and SQ (only routing I could find award seats in C on SQ) was changed to HAM-FRA-MAN-SIN, increasing total trip time by several hours and adding a second stop. I called the SEN line and the very helpfull agent (Kassel of course) was able to find me a C seat on SQ for FRA-SIN (unfortunately not on the 77W flight).. This was my peferred routibganyhow, bu a the time of the booking I wasn'tr able to get a seat on the FRA-SIn flight....

Cheers, S

Cheers, S