Airline changed my itinerary

Had this happen with NW last year. They changed our flight so that we would be boarding our connection in London while still in the air on the flight from Rome! Needless to say, that had to be changed. They may not be as accomodating in your situation if it's inconvenient vs. impossible, however what worked well for me was to research all my other options (what flights left when and where). Then when I called and explained the problem, I laid out specifically what I wanted to do--fly out of Florence instead of Rome--and they made the changes.

But beware! If they change your tickets, be sure they send you a new paper ticket. The agent changed the itinerary online but didn't reissue the ticket and they wouldn't let us board in Florence until we purchased new tickets at the counter. NW refunded the cost of the extra tickets, but only 2 months later, after multiple emails (they were nice about it, just forgetful).

Hi, Cindy! Sorry to hear about your changes. The quick answer is: it happens. Call up and see if you can get it changed, see if they will let you fly on another airline - let them know your story, it helps! Most airlines are pretty cool about it.

I'll spell out the long/technical answer in another post to follow if that doesn't work out for you.

Long Answer:

Airlines are not required by law to guarantee their schedules.

They are required by the DOT to make available their "Contract of Carriage" with you, and that can be found by googling it with the airline's name. The contract will list exactly what the airline has agreed to do for you when there's an involuntary change. To find the rules, look for Section 80, or 'Rule 240' (a relic from an old law), or search for "involuntarty changes". Read over the rules (which can take time... but if it's really less desirable...), and see if they offered you all the options. Maybe they can offer something besides a refund. If you need help deciphering any of that, let me know in a PM.
FYI - to find out which airline, "holds" or "controls" your ticket (the one you'll need to work with), check the first three ticket numbers 006 Delta, 012 NWA.
Hope that helps, and you never have to use it!!! :) chris

Cindy...due to the economy, many airlines are cutting back on their schedules so that the planes that do fly are full.

Plus, you have chosen two airlines that are merging and consolidating their flights.

Your only choice, as mentioned earlier, is to cancel your trip or see if they can put you on a better flight.

Cindy,

It happened several times on our last trip to Europe. They were pretty good about asking me what I prefered and accomodating as well as they could. After several iterations I ended up almost back to my original schedule.

Be sure to cancel or change lodging reservations that you can't make when your flights are changed so they don't charge you for a missed reservation.

Cindy – this just happened to me too. I’ve flown to Europe a couple times on Continental – never had any problems with them changing anything. This time I decided to try NW/Delta. I made the reservations months ago so I could get exactly what I wanted – they’ve changed my flights 3 times. The last time was a few weeks ago –they had me leaving Paris 6 hours earlier with an additional stop in Amsterdam. I called & asked to speak with a supervisor (was on hold for almost an hour) – she got me on a later flight. Funny thing – she made a point of saying she wouldn’t charge me an additional $20 for speaking with a real person – I wasn’t expecting to be charged for complaining. She said they only adjust the fare if the difference is more than $250.

Our NW flights changed....NW then had us leaving out of Paris and arriving in AMS after the new flight time would have departed! All the CDG to AMS flights were full so now we're having to take the train the night before to AMS. The real frustration for me is that I then had to change the Alaska Airlines flight so was charged $75 for the change (I made the AA flight LWS to SEA separately from the NW flights because one NW ticket is ff miles, the other US$ and it's close to impossible to get a ff for the LWS-SEA segment).
One benefit though is that I'll arrive home in the late afternoon rather than midnight.

This happened to us a couple of years ago with British Airways. I called and talked to them and was moved up to a first class seat on a better flight time than I had originally scheduled.