Airline Flight Changes Without Notification

Faith, thank you for your nice post. Airlines do not notify. At least we have never been on one to Europe that does. Each time we book our plane tickets to Europe, we get our flights changed somewhere along the way before the flight. We are never notified. It's a really great reason not to book your reservations on a train for a quick escape based on your normal expected arrival time. It can change.

"Airlines do not notify." This hasn't been my experience. In fact I'd say I've ALWAYS received notification of itinerary changes. But I have learned that the airline may not necessarily notify you until only a month or so prior to your flight. Be sure the airline has all your contact info, such as home #, work #, cellphone #, email address, etc.

I recently had that happen to me to with Continental. I was working on booking a trip to Ireland and just happened to notice that there was a little comment about a changed schedule on another reservation to Florida in April. I didn't receive notification. When that has happened before, I always received an e-mail.

I have had changes but no problem with notification. Delta made a minor change to my tickets -- changing a one-hour layover in Amsterdam to four hours -- a few months ago, and they notified me by e-mail, a phone call and a letter. I thought that was normal. Maybe not.

If you enroll in AA's frequent flyer program, you can establish your profile and request notification of any flight changes - on your cell phone, on your computer, etc. Works like a charm and prevents those nasty little surprises. The FF program is free.

I'm a United Mileage Plus member and have been for years and when booking far in advance, almost always there are schedule changes, most of the time minor, and have never received and email from United, and on occasion have received a phone call to confirm we've seen schedule change. Right now we have two trips booked on United using miles, and about once a month, the itininaries show "schedule changed". I also view the seats to make sure there wasn't a plane change and our choice of seat ions were not changed. In order to view seats, you need to call United to confirm that you've seen the schedule change. However within the 24 hours before the flight, I'm set up to receive an automated call about any departure or gate changes.

How one purchases their ticket may determine whether the airline sends notification directly to the passenger. I always purchase online using airline websites, so they have my e-mail address associated with my reservation and I always receive an e-mail notification of any schedule changes. If tickets are purchased a different way (e.g. through a travel agent or consolidator), the airline may not have a way to send direct notification.

I don't worry too much........I keep checking the flights. If something really gets screwed up, I can always revert to my trip insurance.

I spent 8 hours in the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica yesterday. There was NO physical presence or agent for Continental Airlines to ask why the departure board kept delaying our flight. There was no one on the ground to get ANY info from. They did have free wifi, and we used my daughter's Iphone to surf the web and help pass the time. When I checked my email account, I had 4 messages from Continental updating me on time and gate changes. But no one there giving any info to us in person.

Delta made a huge change to our itinerary, to an impossible schedule, with no notification. Last November, I used FF miles to reserve Denver-Atlanta-Athens this coming September. I checked our flights in February and saw that the Atlanta-Athens nonstop has been cancelled and they had changed our itinerary to Denver-Atlanta-JFK-Athens. Which is fine, except the flight for JFK left Atlanta an hour before we ARRIVED in Atlanta. And, they had given us simlar conflicting schedules for the trip home. A very nice agent was able to re-route us Denver-Atlanta-CDG-Athens, with no change in miles, although now we have just 1 hour 10 minutes between planes in Paris, which makes me nervous. Had I not checked until closer to our trip, rerouting at the same awards level would likely have been impossible and the agent said Delta had no responsibility to provide seats for us, even though it was their changes that ruined our trip. They would just refund our miles. I'm hoping no further changes take place and will be very glad to be done with Delta!

Thanks everyone for your input. We almost exclusively use American for our travels, and travel several times domestically each year, with a trip to Europe every three years or so. We are members of their frequent flyer program and get all sorts of email from them, including occasionally itinerary changes on our mostly domestic flights. Maybe the key is the foreign aspect of the flight. In any case it does make being pro-active (my husband calls it anal!) about getting all the destination area trains/additional flights organized difficult when you can't count on the original arrangements not being changed, let alone being notified of those changes.

Charlene - make absolutely sure your tickets are reissued. We got burned by the same problem (connecting flight leaving before the first flight landed) on a KLM/Northwest flight a few years ago. Ended up having to buy tickets on Meridiana to get to Amsterdam and then being routed on standby tickets back to Seattle. I had our new confirmation and we even had reserved seats on the first flight but "no" ticket. Meridiana seemed to think we should've been issued replacement paper tickets even though the whole itinerary was on an e-ticket. Big mess. Northwest eventually refunded our extra cost but made for a very unpleasant ending to our otherwise wonderful trip. It's possible that if all the flights are on Delta (no codeshare) you won't run into this problem, but it's something to be aware of.

Thanks, Liz. I'll contact Delta and check on this. We're connecting from Delta to Air France at CDG.

Schedules change. Most airlines schedule in 3 month blocks so if you book far enough out they can change it. Remember that all the airlines are required to do is get you to you destination, not nec. on the flight you originally booked.

I always check in on the web 24 hours ahead of flight time if the airline subscribes to that procedure. We were in Europe and I was trying to web check-in for a NW/KLM flight but having no luck. I ended up calling the local airline number and was told that our flight was canceled. I had not left them the phone number of the place we were staying - my problem - but I do not know if they were calling others. NW rerouted us to BA via London and BA put my wife and I on separate planes to fly back to Seattle. After several hours at Heathrow arguing our case with BA to no good, I called NW in the US and told them I was a lawyer (not true) and I would be sending them a law suit as soon as we landed in Seattle. Remarkable, they we able to communicate with BA and get us on the same flight. No more NW or BA. Lesson learned:
I now check on the web for our flights several times leading up to our departure. No problems since.

Faith, This is one reason that I prefer to deal with a Travel Agent for international flights. There was a flight change on my Itinerary last year, and I received no notification at all from the airline. Fortunately, the T.A. became aware of it and let me know.