Reroute and/or Rebooking due to Schedule Changes
 

Booked the following w/Expedia a few weeks ago.....

DL FLL-JFK
UA JFK-LAX-OAK

Used UA miles to upgrade JFK-LAX-OAK.
Received schedule change info yesterday for the DL flight FLL-JFK. Now leaving an hour ealier. Disembarking from a cruise ship in FLL the same morning and will *not* be able to make the DL flight due to clearing customs/immigrations, etc.

Ticket number indicates issued by DL (makes sense, since they're the originating carrier).

Taking the next later flight on DL FLL-JFK will result in a misconnect situation in JFK to UA.

What are my options?

Since I cannot reschedule any workable options via the original routing (via JFK) I would simply like to fly Delta all the way (FLL-ATL-OAK). Will Delta be all too happy to rebook me the entire route with them, snatching the revenue from UA? If agreeable to that, will my miles spent to upgrade on UA automatically go back into my account once the UA space is cancelled?

Is rebooking due to schedule changes basically a "free for all" or are you fairly restricted?

Are FLL-JFK and JFK-...-OAK in the same itinerary or two itineraries?

If two itineraries, I don't think you are entitled to a free re-route of both of them if only one of them had a schedule change.

If it is one itinerary, whoever wrote the ticket should reschedule it to something that works for you, at no extra charge, or refund your money.

What is the point of flying such a circuitous route as FLL-JFK-... OAK?

Travel tips:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/travel.htm

It's all one itinerary, ticketed by Delta (via Expedia).

Reason for the routing? Only need one-way air FLL-OAK and it was the least expensive routing. $213 for the full itinerary. Tried to book UA FLL-OAK via ORD, DEN or IAD but it was $300+ and could not upgrade out of FLL no matter which routing. Only upgrade space I could find was out of JFK.

Will see what Delta & Expedia have to say as far as reroute possibilities.

Delta had no problem rebooking me FLL-ATL-SFO on the flights I requested. They also allowed me to upgrade to BusinessElite ATL-SFO even though the booking code didn't allow mileage upgrades. This was a courtesy move since we had originally been booked in biz class JFK-LAX on UA. Quite pleased with how DL handled the rebooking, especially considering how bizarre the original itinerary was.