Here’s a new one for me (and the Air Canada agent I worked with, who had never seen this happen before).
Today we flew Montreal to Athens. Our original itinerary, booked through Delta on Air France flights, had us flying YUL to CDG to ATH. I checked in with AirFrance 23.5 hours prior to the first flight, received our boarding passes with seat assignments.
Today, we arrived early at the airport, wandered around, had lunch. 90 minutes before departure time, I received an email from Air Canada that it was time to check in for my flight. Huh?
I went to the Air Canada service desk, and sure enough, our AirFrance flights had been canceled and we were rebooked on AC direct to Athens. I also spoke to the AF gate agent for our original flight, and she told me we had been bumped because the flight was overbooked, even though we already had our seats and boarding passes.
I didn’t think airlines would bump someone who was already checked in with a seat assignment. The AC agent was very surprised that this had happened. Anyone had this happen to them?
Obviously this worked out to our advantage with getting a direct flight that we had originally scoped out long ago but was too expensive. We are traveling with another family who is on a separate reservation number; they were kept on the original AF flights and the AF desk agent would not switch them to our AC flight. So it was a bummer to be split up, but we all made it to ATH in the end.
Just curious if anyone else has been bumped like this after getting their boarding pass with seats assigned.