Cautionary tale re: phases of flight reservations

Thank you Alan. A good reminder as it's easy to get into a whirl when doing reservations and not realize things didn't go thru.

I'll add that even before the pandemic caused airline disruption, I made it a habit of checking my flights every few weeks to make sure there were no radical changes. For my most recent trip Delta completely eliminated my return flight from CDG to Seattle and if I'd not checked I'd not have known. Had to change my return day. And yes, I get every Delta marketing email there is so I am never sure why they can't email me when a flight is completely eliminated??

I also have my American Express card set to text me if there is a large charge which a plane ticket usually is. It usually pings before I've even completed everything on a transaction.

Very nice of Alaska to honor the flight price and get him on a plane. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

For reasons that Delta can't seem to explain, sometimes I do not get an email confirmation of a ticket purchase. I also sometimes do not get emails of schedule changes. I just make it a practice to check on the airline website (in my case, usually Delta) and then periodically check my flights to see if changes have been made. It's also worth checking for fare differences. I typically watch for fare decreases, but for my ticket this past September to Poland, I got what we thought was an incredible rate. A week later, I needed to call Delta with a problem, and the agent happened to see that the ticket price had dropped by $150 per ticket. THAT was a cheap trip!

I've always thought a boarding pass was odd, it's just a duplicate of your ticket ...

@phred: Back in the day (late 70s) I remember taking my ticket directly to the gate and checking in, whereupon I was issued the boarding pass (assuming I had no baggage to check). That was back when virtually everything was refundable (and fares were federally regulated). The boarding pass indicated you had in fact checked in, since there could well have been ticketed passengers not showing up. So the boarding passes comprised the final nose count.

As a follow-up, son learned a painful lesson last night when he disclosed he hadn't booked flights for Christmas yet. He's now booked: SFO-PDX: about $800 in economy.

These tips are excellent. I always check my flights about a week out and then again three days out. This year I had a code-share flight from LHR to SEA that was really on Virgin Atlantic but also had a Delta flight number. The reservations were made through Delta. I looked at the flight on the Delta site three days before leaving and it had a small notice that said "canceled." I never got an email about the cancelation and Delta did not automatically reroute my itinerary. Can this really be true, I wondered? I verified on third-party sites that the flight had been canceled. Then there was a long wait on the phone to reroute my itinerary. It ended up OK for me, but what if I hadn't checked ahead of time, I would have been stuck without a flight home. Always check and the double-check that your flights are really flying.

I have the Delta app on my phone. That makes it super easy to check my flights from time to time.