help for unexpected re-routing and time changes
 

Do I have any chance in getting any help in this matter? I cannot seem to get through to the proper channel to speak with someone and I am noticing a trend that the FF desk is becoming very rude in their attitude.

I have made arrangements originally to use a 25,000 domestic award from Latrobe, PA to Las Vegas, booked over 6 months by phone, since the res. could not be done online due to a NWA web site glitch. By booking over the phone due to their website glitch I was required to pay $10 that I wanted to have refunded, and that I ended up going in circles back & forth with NWA over. with no result forthcoming.

6 months after my reservation was made for latrobe airport, PA ( a small rural airport with free parking and close to my home) I received by mail a notice that my flight was changed to an ungodly hour in the a.m. at Pittsburgh Intl. which will be a 3 hour drive (one way) for me at that time of morning.

My return trip is also being re-routed through Pgh.

I will now be required to pay for 8 days parking have 120 miles of travel and have flight times that are very inconvenient for me but on the correct days that I need to travel. But Latrobe had free parking and was 20 minutes from my house.

I cannot seem to locate the proper channel at NWA to speak with, or to change my seat assignment, etc.

Is there anything they can do about this? Latrobe airport to Pittsburgh airport is a huge difference in travel time and costs and inconveince for me, which is why I made my award reservation nearly one year prior to traveling.

The rudeness I have encountered is completely unacceptable to me, and everyone I have spoken with at NWA seems to have no idea who I really need to "talk" to or how to get this resolved. Am I due to receive anything for my inconvenience or am I relegated to being given a time consuming run-around over the phone?

Please advice.............................thank you.

More details please... i.e., flight dates, original routing etc.

I just checked on nwa.com and NW is still flying to LBE... even through June.

Was your travel even on NW or a partner -- CO or DL

The proper channel to get this resolved for non-elites is 800-225-2525/800-447-3757

more info follows:
 

I think my original reservation was as follows: Right now I am not certain who the actual carrier was, but may have been Delta

Depart Latrobe (LBE) april 6, 2006
arrive Detroit (DTW)

Depart Detroit
arrive salt lake city

depart salt lake city
arrive las vegas


April 13
depart las vegas (LAS)
arrive atlanta (ATL)

depart atlanta
arrive detroit

depart detroit
arrive latrobe

1 passenger, 25,000 mile award ticket
cost to book over phone $10 (for no reason other than their web site had a glitch in it the day the reservation was made)

Yes, this was a difficult itenerary, and I was originally hoping for a direct route, but I figured that flying over Slat Lake would have been a great sight



NWA then changed the entire reservation to this:

Leave April 6, (PIT) at 5:00 am (ungodly hour and I prefer not to travel at that time)
arrives: Atlanta Hartsfield at 6:48 am class of service (N)
operated by Atlantic Southeast Airlines (I have never heard of them)

depart Atlanta at 8:50 am
arrive Las Vegas at 9:50 am

Depart on April 13
depart Las Vegas at 8:30 am (I do not want to leave this early in the morning and prefer an afternoon flight or evening flight only)
arrive Atlants (ATL) at 3:36 pm

Depart Atlanta at 4:25 pm
arrive (PIT) at 6:02 pm

no assigned seats given for any portion as of yet.

$10.00 charge may have been added a second time to my C card, hard to tell at the moment if I was charged twice for no reason from the world perks call center ticket fee.

Again any advice is very much welcomed. Thank you.

Your problem is Delta.... Not Northwest. I see that because you are connecting through Atlanta and Salt Lake City. Most likely Delta had a schedule change. Your Delta segments would have been SLC-LAS & LAS-ATL; now what they have done is put you exclusively on Delta. Delta is the one that made the change not Northwest (maybe -- don't know without the original schedule times), I have been bitten by this as well. Frankly Delta could really care less about you, you can try calling them but it is unlikely that the India Call Center will know what to do and my interactions with the stateside reps. has been just as bad.

The situation you find yourself in now is that the only awards out of LBE (which only NW flys too -- no one else) are rulebusters from April 6th departure with a April 13th return. That is why Northwest is basically giving you the brush off.

You need to find your original schedule and try to find out what schedule change caused the problem. If it was the Northwest segments I would try to argue that due to their schedule change the reroute happened and they should protect you on the DTW-LAS & LAS-DTW flights on NW metal. I would not be optimistic about it though.

The only other partial solution I can come up with is to take the Pittsburg routing and find a inexpensive hotel that has a shuttle to the airport. Stay the night of the 5th and sometimes hotels will let you leave your car in their lot.

Good Luck

The carrier you redeemed your miles with is responsible to re-accomodate you. So if you redeemed NW miles, you need to deal with NW exclusively.

They need to get you from A to B - regardless of inventory availability. If DL made the schedule change, NW has to work out reaccomodation with DL (if applicable) on your behalf.

While I understand the default position on this board is to never blame NW, from what has been posted so far, this looks like it's clearly a NW issue. DL may have had a schedule change, but this is a NW ticket, and the first and last segments were on NW, and it was NW's systems that allowed it to drop the critical LBE segments and substitute PIT instead.

The customer had a flight to/from LBE, and NW changed it to PIT. So long as there's still service, this should not have happened.

Typically, this would be an easy fix. Call them, tell them you were out of LBE and ask what happened, they can't answer, and ask them to crack open some seats on their metal to put you back out of LBE (hopefully on their metal all the way). Of course customer service is in the sh!tter these days at NW, and many agents are under tight scrutiny, so you may have to push to get the right supervisor to help you.

Long story short, don't accept what you were given, say you were out of LBE, and want it back, and don't change your story. Be careful how you phrase things -- you don't want to change your ticket (that incurs a fee and is subject to availability), rather you were impacted by a schedule change and want them to fix it. In the end, they'll do the right thing (NW usually does), it just might be tough to get to the right person.

Actually, changes like that are not worked by the system - they end up on a queue and are worked by a real human person (be it in the US, or India, or somewhere else).

That's not what the folks at WP told me last time something like this happened to me...had NW/CO routing, NW knew they'd have a crew rest issue 24 hours before the flight so they rerouted me 100% on CO, CO knew they'd have weather and re-rerouted me 100% on DL....DL's answer was weather? Looks good to us.....I knew better as the storm was going to hit ATL worse than EWR so I called the nice folks at NW back and they gladly re-re-rerouted me back on mixed NW/CO equipment unfortunately through DTW & IAH but I got there and only 3 hours behind schedule :) The way the WP folks explained it to me is the operator of the cxled flight will automatically take over rerouting

NOTE: After re-routes expect to have an out of sync issue with your ticket and unless you ask them to be sure it's in sync :D

What you are talking about is a whole different ballgame. You are talking about operational issues on the day of departure, while the original poster is talking about a schedule change.

:rolleyes:

channa, let's make a deal: I'd personally fly out to S.F. and kiss your behind if the OP booked his/her ticket via NW and subsequently contacted NW to inform them that their schedule change was unacceptable and he/she preferred to travel on [insert peferred flights here] and NW told him/her "no way, you're SOL" more than once.

If fact, as I write this, both LBE-DTW-LAS pairings (there's two LBE-DTW flighrs on 4/6) currently have standard award seats available.

Ahh...good point, I just assumed they were handled the same way

mcmmcm: Call NW again and patiently explain that your itinerary was drastically changed and the proposed change is not acceptable to you. Ask if they can please reaccommodate you on flights that are nearer your original times and that leave from LBE instead of PIT. If they say it's not possible, ask nicely to speak with a supervisor and start over with your explanation of the situation and your request. It will help if you call armed with a list of specific flights that would be acceptable. I'd forget the $10 phone gouging fee for now. It's an unnecessary complication.

If they are unable to reaccommodate you, they should at least refund your miles (and here's where I'd get nasty about the $10 phone booking fee). That may not be what you want, but it's probably the only real recourse you have if they really stick to their guns about the change.

Didn't I say in my post that NW would ultimately do the right thing? :rolleyes: I think we're in agreement on this matter.

If you take issue to my statement about the default position of defending NW on this board, please refer to the "blame Delta" post I was responding to.

As the ticketing agency NW should -- and I'm sure they will -- make good on this. If you were originally booked on non-NW metal (which sounds likely given what you've described) and there are schedule changes, NW isn't likely to do any more than passively inform you of the changes. They've done that.

However, you don't have to accept major changes of this nature. If the CSR's try to structure it as a further change request from you, decline. Explain to them very firmly that you purchased a ticket departing at X time from Y airport, and that you expect to receive the agreed upon service. In an extreme case (NW service discontinued from Y) you might have to accept a refund; otherwise NW will figure out how to do it. Just be firm & persistent. :cool:

wow
 

I had no idea so much advice would be forthcoming, but thanks for all of it. I agree in that I did ask for specific service at specific times from a specific airport and I do expect to receive that.

I will call and speak with NW about it, and hopefully they can do something to accomodate me, whether refunding the 25,000 miles or not, if they can that would be great and I will accept the full schedule changes, if they cannot, then I will be asking for them to accommodate me on a later flight out of Vegas for the return trip. This is because I never leave any trip first thing in the morning as I normally finish up work on my final day and do not like to waste a full day by having to be at the airport by 7:00 am.

As for the $10, that really does bother me, because it was not my problem but rather theirs. I will be trying to get this resolved also but of course my main concern is the flight times.

Thanks for all the help, its very much appreciated! I will post again when this has been resolved!