Confirm your airline reservations

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I agree with you. Last trip to Europe one of my flights was eliminated and the flight the airline switched me to arrived after my connecting flight would have already left. Had to totally change my returning flights. I am going to Europe again in 3 weeks and have been checking weekly. So far out of the 4 flights I am taking, three have changed. Nothing major like last time but hey I got three weeks to go, you never know.

Thanks for posting this. For my most recent trip to Europe last fall, I checked my flights every week. My airline changed planes on us 3 times, which wasn't a big deal, but my sister and I wanted to sit together so we made sure to pick seats as soon as we discovered the changes.

hi, roger that happy trails.

Delta.

Instead of continuously monitoring flight changes, why not sign up for e-alerts? If the airline or Orbitz has your e-mail, they should e-mail changes to your itinerary (sometimes too frequently, in the case of 10-15 min shifts here and there). I've never had a problem with Orbitz tickets, but yes, this system is not 100% perfect. I've had other airlines not contact me (although perhaps the e-mail went into my spam folder). I've contacted airlines in the past which completely screwed up my schedule and asked them for a complete rebook...sometimes the new schedule was better, sometimes not.

Actually I do have email alerts for this trip which was booked online in January. I received one email in February re: a change to my flight (CDG to Istanbul times and flight numbers changed) and that was it. No notification whatsoever that the CDG to Istanbul leg had been eliminated. It was only after looking on the Delta website for my reservation yesterday that I saw that the CDG to Istanbul leg of the outbound flight had been completely eliminated. So relying on emails from the airline . . . after this experience I don't think so. And after notifying Delta about the issue and getting my reservation changed yesterday, I have yet to receive a ticket number from them, the website does not reflect the changes to my seat assignments and the online "receipt" still shows the screwed up reservation. I will be making another call to Delta this morning to get this straightened out.

Also, using e-mail alerts to a smartphone while departing one US airport for a recent international trip saved our bacon as the reader boards were not nearly as helpful.

Again, that is assuming the email alerts are sent by the airline which in this case they were not.

Same thing has happened to me 2x on my United/AirCanada flight for next month. I always check my reservation after I book it, about every 2 weeks. Once when I checked the flight I had was completely gone, I had a red worded alert, but nothing was ever emailed or sent as a text to me (I AM signed up for alerts- but those only seem to come last minute, not months/weeks out) I called as soon as I saw the change and got a new flight. What's been happening to me over the last month or so is the time has changed for the flight. The time on the return flight for connection went from 2 hours to 1.45min. I called and got us booked on a later fight with 3 hours between connections. NO way was I confident enough that we could deplane, get through passport control and then customs and recheck our bags and get from the international arrival to domestic concourse in less than 2 hours. Your post is very timely and really good to give others a heads up that the airlines are always changing times and routes, and as we book months in advance, it's really important to check on a routine basis and call as soon as there is a change. This could ruin a vacation.

The problem is that e-mail alerts aren't always sent like they're supposed to be. I had no problems with any of my airlines last year notifying me by e-mail of itinerary or equipment changes well in advance. However, even though I received my confirmation and ticketing e-mails properly by United this year, I received no e-mail alerts regarding the changes they made and only discovered them by checking out my reservation proactively (I am signed up for alerts). So, I'm with others who suggest keeping an eye on this stuff a few times before your trip.

Right. You need to verify these things. It could seriously affect a vacation. It has taken me two calls this am to get things sorted out with the airline. I will continue to check up until departure.

Mary,
It's a good thing you were checking up on your trip. It pays to keep up on travel plans. The airlines sure don't mind taking our money, but they don't want to let us know when details of our trip changes.

OMG. I thought I had this thing straightened out with the airline, flights, seat assignments. They just sent me an email which is an itinerary and receipt with the reservation as it was in February. Totally wrong. I am pulling my hair out. My trip account/reservation is correct online and now I have this incorrect receipt and itinerary via email. Was it just automatically generated without regard to the changes made? Will I get another one but this time correct? Another call to the airline.

Oh man, I just checked my reservations for late August. My Air Canada flight from Denver>Toronto has been changed, leaving me just 1 hour 6 minutes to transfer to my Turkish Air flight to Istanbul. This all happens late evening on a Monday (arrive 9:44 pm, depart 10:50 pm). I've never been to the Toronto airport. Is one hour enough time to make that transfer? Will we have to go through passport control or anything in Toronto?

Charlene, Here's the web page from the Toronto Airport website about flight connections; scroll down for the portion appropriate to your flights: http://www.torontopearson.com/Connecting.aspx#

Hi Mary, thanks for this helpful FYI. I'm flying on Delta at the end of next month so I'm going to keep an eye on the booking for schedule changes.

Thanks, Harold. I called the Toronto airport to confirm, and we would have to go through passport control and security, albeit all in Terminal One. So the nice lady I talked to said we'd have plenty of time unless our first flight was delayed at all. She also said that evenings are busier than mornings in the Toronto airport. So I think I'll try to change my flight. Bummer. I was looking forward to my Business class (from FF miles, of course) on Turkish Airlines.