davidflies

I was flying LAS-LAX on southwest airlines to make a connecting flight at LAX on American Airlines. These tickets were non-refundable to Tokyo! Needless to say I could not miss that American flight!

I changed my southwest flight to an earlier flight so I would not have to rush. I get to the airport and guess what... DELAYED! A one hour delay. No prob since I had 5 hours to make the flight. Well the one hour turned into 1.5 hrs. Finally we board the plane and start to taxi. Pilot comes on the speaker "due to heavy air traffic at LAX, air traffic control has asked us to sit out here for 45 minutes". OMG now I'm really sweating this out. 30 mins go by and the pilot tells us it's time to go. We taxi a bit more and ready for this... the left engine on the 737 overheats! Pilot comes on and tell us "this flight has been canceled". Now I'm in freak mode. I just accepted the fact that my trip to the orient was ruined and I'm out $5,000 in prepaid airfare and hotels.

I called American and explain the situation. They tell me that since my connecting flight is a different carrier, they are not responsible and can't help me if I don't make it to LAX, which I told them I understood perfectly.

They take us back to the gate and put us on another plane next door. We take off. Land at LAX terminal 1 and I run the entire length of the airport to terminal 4! Ready for this... made the gate closing time by THREE MINUTES. I was drenched in sweat.

I hope to heaven I never experience that fiasco again. Next time will fly to LAX one day prior.

extramileage

Yikes! Lesson learned!

fassy

How about booking one ticket all the way through? Might cost a couple of hundred $$$ extra, but I have even seen plans ruined where they were 24 hours or more between two separate tickets

omaralt

wow thats nuts. but there's no need to fly in the night before, simply book one ticket. if there is a delay on the first leg of the journey they will accommodate you and rebook you. i'm flying to AUH from dulles next month, but there are no direct flights from TPA to IAD on AA. so i considered buying a direct flight on a different carrier, but decided against it. now i have to connect via CLT but at least it's all one ticket

tjl

If you book it as one ticket and miss the connection, you should get rebooked on a later flight... although for overseas flights, the next flight could be next day or similar very long delay in getting to your destination.

fassy

Most people book in two different tickets to save money. In a lot of cases it is cheaper to buy a positioning flight on one carrier and the ticket to a final destination with another.

Anyway, for me the savings are not worth the risk. My vacation is precious time (don't have that much) and also losing prepaid reservations is throwing away money... All that to save a couple of hundred $?

CPRich

This is one of the significant challenges with using Southwest. I don't believe you can "single ticket" with them. But these days, they aren't really that much cheaper in many cases. And I think it would be very rare that the domestic difference would be significant to a combined international itinerary.

pinniped

You definitely can't single-ticket this. One of the drawbacks of Southwest, although allegedly they're building IT systems over the next 1-2 years that some people speculate would enable codeshares, interlining, and other "modern" airline practices.

I totally understand what the OP did...I've done it several times myself with other airports. On LAS-LAX, I might have tried to book that cheap first segment on AA, since they have no problem linking two PNRs on their own metal for both baggage and irrops purposes. Or I might have rented a car and just headed down to LA at first light. I did a LAS-LAX rental earlier this year and it was actually cheaper than a regular LAS in-town rental (about $20/day).

emma69

You can also get travel insurance that covers you for missed connections (mine specifies that there must be a minimum of 2 hours between scheduled arrival and departure to be covered).

LondonElite

You can, but this was not a connection. It was two completely separate flights.

fassy

There are plenty of option from LAS to TYO with one or two stops, e.g. AA and JL on LAS-DFW-NRT. Perhaps a tad more expensive than using WN for LAS-LAX and then LAX-TYO but certainly the safe option. You pay of premium for that safety, which is for me worth every penny.

puddinhead

AA flies from LAS-LAX. You should have been able to book a flight from LAS-TYO on AA.

Using WN with a luggage requires going landside, collecting luggage and rechecking it in with the connecting carrier.

pinniped

Yes, we all completely understand that you can pop LAS-TYO into a search engine and ticket it as one PNR on any number of airlines/alliances. However, I'm going to guess that in the OP's case, it was more than a "tad" more expensive - otherwise this thread would not exist.

We probably all have our own threshold here. Dollars saved, time added to the trip, and whether you'd actually *enjoy* that extra day if everything runs on time. I've booked long international trips ex-ORD (instead of ex-MCI) to save $400-500 per ticket x 4-5 tickets. Segment 1 has, on different occasions, been WN to MDW, Amtrak to Union Station, or AA Avios awards to ORD. The kids love Chicago...that's an easy call for us.

That's probably what I would have done, this gives you all of the benefits of you're looking for in terms of irrops support and baggage interlining. (Sounds like OP may not have had bags, given the run to the gate and making it by 3 minutes...) AA and WN are *usually* competitive on that route, so you'd likely be at a near-optimal total airfare as well. Only trade-off is that you pretty much just lose that extra ticket if you decide to cancel/change the trip (whereas on WN you'd be able to use it later).

emma69

Sorry, my terminology was off - I have insurance that will cover me, myself making a connection, whether it is flight-flight, train-flight, flight-train, boat-train etc etc. in no way shape or form booked together, provided the first mode of transport was due to arrive more than 2 hours before - e.g. I book a flight with Delta that arrives at 3pm, I am covered for my Air Canada flight on a separate booking at 5:30pm.

Loren Pechtel

Yup. One ticket is a great protection against IIROPS, although it won't save you from things like missing your cruise.