So I just went to nwa.com to see how full my flights were for a flight on July 3 (of course hoping they are empty to secure the sometimes evasive upgrade) and saw that my original CID-MSP-DCA trip had turned into CID-MSP-DTW-DCA. But I know I never received an email to notify the changed itinerary as I have many times in the past. So I thought this pretty odd. I looked up MSP-DCA flights and saw that my 4:48pm departure from MSP was no longer a scheduled flight; just 3:13pm and 6:43.

Luckily, when I called NWA they quickly were able to give me the 3:13 as I had a 2 plus-hour layover in MSP originally (from 2:15ish to 4:45ish). All in all, I will end up getting back to DCA an hour and a half earlier than scheduled. But, had I not seen the change I would have gotten back 2 hours later than scheduled. Anyways, I'm really glad it got switched around (nice phone agent!) but the no notification was odd. Has this happened to others? Hope it's just a glitch or maybe I caught it early and the email hasn't come yet. Strange.

.....

The other thing I thought was odd was that they could have booked me on the 6:45pm MSP-DCA flight instead of the 8pm or whatever DTW flight. Both get in at 10pmish so the extra connection really did no good. It's not like I was missing the last MSP-DCA flight of the night; unless they really were trying to be "nice" and save me the 4-hour layover.

They did this to me on an evening (9 pm flight) Thanksgiving 2004. I wasn't notified; I just happened to be checking my reservation and discovered this. I had to fly the day after Thanksgiving as my sister and her two kids were also flying back with me and we didn't want to fly earlier in the day (thus, missing Thanksgiving altogether). I never got any additional compensation; although the customer service person who dealt with this was pleasant and helpful, we were made to feel like NW was doing us a favor by putting us on the 9 pm flight the next day (we hoped the kids would sleep) rather than making us fly on an earlier flight on Thanksgiving day.

I didn't think airlines could just cancel flights out of the blue (this was two months before Thanksgiving) but apparently they can. (I suspect they canceled because of low passenger load).

Airlines can change their schedule any time they want. It happens all the time and sometimes with short notice. The out you have has a customer is that if they can't reaccomidate you on flights that work for you they must provide a refund.