What can go wrong when flights are cancelled
 

On a OW award ticket in South America, was scheduled to fly GIG-SCL-LIM on LAN751 and LAN632. Flight 751 makes a stop in GRU with 50 minutes on ground, but not visible in itinerary.

After takeoff from Rio, electrical system in cabin has cascading failures, first entertainment units and seat lighting, later seat motor controls so some landed with legrests up and backs reclined, even had some signs like Lav light flickering and going off. On ground in GRU, pilot announces that due to technical issues we need to deplane. About 2.5 hours later, the flight is cancelled.

Many rerouted on later GRU-SCL flight, but our last connection to LIM would not be possible, so LAN agent moves us to a GRU-LIM nonstop. We ended up with an early arrival because we cut out the indirect leg through SCL. All seemed good.

However, LAN did not record us as having taken the LAN751 nor the LAN632 flights, instead seeing us pop up wiht a GRU-LIM flight. To them, we stuck in another open jaw and rerouted without working with them, since the GRU stop is hidden in the LAN751 flight routing and not visible. They unilaterally and without contacting me cancelled all the following segments.

I just happened to spot this by seeing that the flights were still listed on the AA.com website, from whom I booked the award, but the seat assignments went away. I checked on LAN.com and all were gone.

I am in Lima, due to fly to Cusco tomorrow on a nonexistent reservation, then home on 7/1 from CUZ-LIM-LAX-SFO with the CUZ-LIM-LAX part now cancelled.

The agent to whom I spoke now understands what happened and that it was not my instigation, instead an involuntary reroute by LAN, but I am on tenterhooks while they "request reinstatement" of the segments and promise to call me at some point to let me know when it is successful.

If I had not idly checked, I would have been at the airport tomorrow and very probably unable to get it all sorted out in time to fly to Cusco. At this point, I have been waiting hours and so far no segments added back. Most likely it will not happen until the staff come to work tomorrow, yet I would need to leave my hotel by about 11AM to make the flight assuming they rebook it.

If you have any anomalies in your award flights, check and double check.

We encountered a variant of this problem, but in a more minor way, a few weeks ago in the same part of the world. After arriving early in LIM from SCL, the LAN counter agent helpfully suggested that we could get on a LIM-CUZ flight that was leaving in 30 minutes instead of having to wait 4 hours for the flight we had booked. A few days later, when we we tried to fly back CUZ-LIM we were told that our booking had been cancelled because we had not shown up for our scheduled LIM-CUZ flight. Even though our travel coordinator claimed she had reconfirmed the flight, it took more than 30 minutes at CUZ airport with the counter agent consulting with various management personnel, etc (the plane was fully booked) before we were able to board. I agree-- with LAN it seems necessary to be absolutely sure that a flight variant does not result in future cancellations.

It's not just LAN - it seems like they've "improved" the software that manages reservations automatically and it's turned into HAL. A couple of weeks ago a somewhat different change - probably Cathay's interest in dealing with a BKK-CMB segment - caused my LAX-LHR booking to disappear without notice. Through slight fortune I found out about it a week earlier, rather than turning up at LAX all dressed up and nowhere to go.

Seems like everyone needs to keep an eye on their bookings at least weekly. As someone here tags, it's not nearly as much fun as it used to be.

Just as a followup to underline the need for caution and diligence by OW fliers.

The agent promise to reinstate and call me that I received at 7PM at night had not materialized by 9:30AM the next day, with my next segment at 1:15PM now getting perilously close.

I used the hotel concierge to call. The LAN status had relapsed to "we cancelled your flights because you or a prior airline failed to .. . ". Now having had two agents tell me things were okay, when they were not, my concern level was rising.

I armed the concierge with the important points, most key being the phrase "involuntary reroute by LAN", wiht the flight numbers and dates involved. The concierge at the JW Marriott has a good relationship with someone in LAN, and after a bit, they finally did (again) admit that it was their error to cancel the segments. They promised to rebook all the segments in 20 minutes, which the concierge would verify by calling back after that interval.

It only took 45 minutes, but the concierge called back to tell me all were now rebooked, but that I should be heading immediately to the airport due to my near-in flight.

I did log in to lan.com and select seats, as the rebooking was done but nothign beyond that.

In fact, when I got to the airport, they had reserved the seats but having already deleted all teh eticket and fare info, I had a reservation with no sign of payment. Fortunately I had collected itineraries and receipts every way I could, so that I did have somewhere paper ticket stock receipts that listed the eticket numbers. Took 45 minutes but finally we had boarding passes.

Same problem again in Cusco coming back, but the agent took the extra step of printing the eticket numbers on our boarding passes.

While the error was fixed, it was in the most minimal and incomplete way. Be vigilant and have lots of backup documentation.