Helpful Travel Agent makes up for impersonal airline

Can you clarify who the third-party was? Do you mean an online booking agent like Kayak or Orbitz when you say "travel agent" or a personal travel agent (i.e. a person who booked your travel)?

I've done the same thing recently with a flight change (different airline), but it didn't involve either a travel or booking agent. I hope that folks don't get the impression that they are powerless without someone acting on their behalf...airline flight changes happen quite a bit (mostly they are too minor to matter). In case of substantive changes, if you are nice and get a helpful reservation staff on the phone, you can get the outcome you're looking for by simply calling and explaining your situation patiently (and saying that it really puts you in a bind and you'd like their help). I talked to a woman from an overseas call center in India and she was more helpful than the US-based airline staff (of the same airline), so it never hurts to try, if not once then twice.

I'm glad it worked out for you without much stress.

We had a schedule change this last spring that was irksome; we had booked from Tulsa to London on British Airways, leaving TUL at about 6:00 pm, then DFW at about 9:30. Well, we had an email from BA saying the AA leg of the trip from TUL to DFW had been cancelled, and we had been rebooked on a flight leaving at 1:30! But the AA schedule still showed the original flight. I called BA twice, and was told nothing could be done. It didn't occur to me to call a travel agent. I considered cancelling that leg of the BA booked flight, and booking TUL to DFW as a separate round-trip journey, but I weenied out. For one thing, it would have cost more, and I was afraid if something went wrong on the TUL - DFW flight, we might have problems making the connection.

It turned out even more unsatisfying because the DFW to London flight got moved even later to 10:00, and then ended up leaving 4 hours late!

So thanks for the feel-good story. Next time I may try a travel agent.

I am forced to fly United often because of my port of departure. They are miserable. BUT, the United people can indeed be great.

Clarifying for Agnes et alia, since I wasn't clear on what made this an unusual and pleasant outcome:

I usually book flights myself directly with the airline via their website, or in the misty days of yore by telephone with a person.
In this case I used a travel agency, because of billing issues behind-the-scenes. The travel agency (BCD corporate travel management) charges my organization an $8 fee to book a simple itinerary (it used to be higher, I think there is competition from a variety of corners) but lately finds the same pricing for tickets that I find doing my own online research. Anything not-so-simple, like changes, usually comes with more fees on top of whatever the airline itself takes to make any changes.

In more than one instance stuck in the craw of my memory, itineraries I bought directly didn't go as planned, because of delays or changes, and when I or any reasonable traveler could foresee the sticking point up ahead, and I took some action by trying to reason with airline agents (as some mention above) it has been torturous, e.g. "we calculate X minutes as a reasonable time to connect, so we won't change your itinerary" or "your connection airport is X, not Y, so you're going to have to live with X's scheduling".

I have little doubt that if I had called United directly rather than having a BCD person do so after tapping on her own specialized terminal, the United staffer would have told me, "Don't worry! 43 minutes is plenty of time to get between gates at IAH. You'll be fine. I see connection times even shorter than that!" And saying that planes get slowed on the taxi-ways or the jetway can take a few minutes to attach to the door, or that things can just generally run a few minutes behind doesn't change their resolve. The result is anxiety for me beforehand, at the least, and an unnecessary wait for the next flight if things do indeed not go smoothly. Dealing directly with the airline activates the worry-wart centers of my brain, so as much as I like not spending $8 to get something I can get on my own, in this incident I am pleased to have the travel agent there to say whatever magic words mean that 43 minutes -- cutting it close -- is the airline's doing, not the customer's, and therefore the airline should feel obliged to fix it. When I put my money down, it was 75 minutes, and if that hadn't worked out then I would have shrugged and said "Oh well, these things happen." But if I agreed to 75 minutes, they instead give me 43 minutes, and things don't work out, then it would be another thing stuck in the craw of my memory for years to come.

Now that seems a little petty as I look at what I wrote to me even as I wrote it, but it's true -- I wouldn't bear much grudge if what I originally booked didn't work out, but if the same minor misfortune happened after they kind-of switched schedules on me, I would've been livid.

Avirosemail - your complaint doesn't seem petty to me. A forty-three minute connection anywhere would have me nervous about delays and making the connection. I'm glad things worked out well for you! Delta was good about making changes for me last year (five in all) when AF kept changing our return flight but finally (according to AF) there were no more flights to change to that were not worse than what we ended up with. I wasn't happy about it but it ended up okay as CDG was practically empty for an 8:00 am flight and I had been somewhat nervous about navigating a strange airport under time constraints. I was worried about our connection time in ATL until we made it through immigration since they weren't calling people through for a good bit. We have about the same connection time this go around too so I'm knocking on wood already.

Nance, what's "AF"?

I believe Nance is referencing Air France.

Thanks for sharing. I've experienced United's "doable" connections in the past and so I feel your pain. My experience was in DC, with gates in completely separate terminal buildings, requiring long and cumbersome transportation between. And on top of that, coming in from an international flight and switching to a domestic flight and all the hassle of customs and immigration that that entails. The connection time was, to no surprise, completely impossible. Ensued where crowds of people who'd missed their flights, lining up at the United service desk for recourse. You could just sense the seething anger and anxiety in the line. After an hour of waiting in this line, I was pleasantly surprised at how kind, understanding, and also incredibly fast and efficient the service rep was. I figured, the staff had probably been taking a beating already for issues they did not cause. Long store short, yes, sometimes the kindness and helpfulness of a real live human being goes a long way.