Not really a hidden city question
 

Reading with interest the latest hidden city thread prompted me to recall an incident about ten years ago (for my first ft post).

Returning with Finnair from Shanghai to Copenhagen via Helsinki, the flight was delayed 2-3 hours from Shanghai, and thus was late arriving in Helsinki. I had a (separate, not Finnair) ticket from Copenhagen to Stockholm, my final destination for the day, which I was obviously going to miss.

So in Helsinki I saw that there was a Finnair flight to Stockholm almost immediately, and asked to be put on it. Rather to my surprise, the Finnair transfer agent agreed, with the result that I arrived in Stockholm earlier than if everything was on time. And I could just throw away my Copenhagen - Stockholm ticket.

No real question here, just an anecdote, wonder if it is particularly unusual ?

They did you a favor to make up for their irrops. :)

In that era on that airline with whatever status you held then, no idea how unusual it was. In 2014 on my primary airlines (AA, UA) as a low- or partner-elite it would be highly unusual.

I have requested my final destination changed due to irrop many time. I even had some luck with VDBing overnight and flying to a different destination the next morning.

Similar thing happened to me on DL a few years back. I was booked to Calgary, there to meet up with friends and drive to Edmonton. Asked to be rebooked on a flight to Edmonton so I could meet them there after they drove north and the rest of the day could keep to its original schedule. I think I had DL status at the time, but I don't think that was a factor. They were glad to do it: it helped relieve pressure on the Calgary flights everyone else wanted to get put on.

More recently, AA at DFW rebooked me from Vancouver to Seattle when I missed the last flight to YVR but there was still one to SEA. They even changed my return when I explained that, if I got a rental car at SEA to drive to YVR, it would be very expensive to return it anywhere else.