Flight Cancelled

Yeah, I had some fun with AA recently. We're flying back from Europe through BOS and then to CLT. Get a message that our flight has changed. Now rather than going BOS-CLT at 1945, we will fly to DCA arriving at about 2200 to have a departing flight to CLT leave there at 0700. Great eight hours in a closed up airport, plus we have to be somewhere in the morning. Find that AA has just pulled the plug on the later in the day BOS-CLT flights. Delta has one, so I grab two seats on that.

Call AA and try to get my money back on the leg they canceled (hopefully to defray the cost of the DL ticket). Took over an hour working with the agent to have her come back and tell me they can't give me any money back on a voluntary change. VOLUNTARY? You pulled my flight for purely profit reasons. Spend some more time and they decide, OK, they'll give me enough travel credits to cover it. Amusingly, much more. But I'll never understand airline fares. Great, go check my tickets. WAIT A FREAKING MINUTE. They've downgraded my First Class. Call back. After another twenty minutes with a different guy, they get me back into first class. Amusingly, they can't figure out what the right fare refund would have been, so they put me back in first class and let me keep the overly large credits. They warned me that if I try to voluntarily change my flight, someone might figure out what the fare really should have been.

And this is all with the dedicated "platinum/AirPass" reservations people who are much better than the normal AA customer service lines.
 
flyingron said:
Call AA and try to get my money back on the leg they canceled (hopefully to defray the cost of the DL ticket).
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If your flight is cancelled, you 100% have the right to a refund to the original form of payment. The airline may offer vouchers, often in a higher amount, but you are in no obligation to take them.

Be firm with the agent but don't waste too much time with one who isn't cooperating. Head straight to the DoT page and file a compliant. The airline is required to respond to all DoT complaints. File a complaint, even after the fact, if they gave you a hard time, or made it difficult, to get your full fare returned.
 
luvflyin said:
What if the only issue was employees not being able to drive get to work because of the weather. The Flight was a PDX SBA PDX flight. I expect that the plane was at PDX to start the flight.
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That would not have been a weather delay.

I was only involved in the maintenance side of things. But everybody in our operation took completing schedules pretty seriously. I don’t think most people appreciate how well it all has to go to work right. A delay prior to 9am in the morning was nearly 100% to cause a delay on a line all day long. We would happily fly empty spare aircraft when available to cover broken aircraft flights from outstations. Delays and cancellations were certainly not the result of a lack of effort, or not willing to use the available resources.

To me it’s amusing the anybody without sources on the inside can decide exactly why their flight was delayed or canceled.
 
Larry in TN said:
If your flight is cancelled, you 100% have the right to a refund to the original form of payment. The airline may offer vouchers, often in a higher amount, but you are in no obligation to take them.
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The problem is that I hadn't bought a ticket from BOS-CLT, I had one from LUX-CLT and it was the 12 hour delay of the last leg that was the problem.
 
dbahn said:
They're trained to do battle. I stopped flying USAir after getting delayed from a connecting flight in Philadelphia because the ground crew didn't get to the plane to unload until almost half an hour after pulling up to the gate, so we missed the last flight of the day for our destination. I was told that the hotel would be paid for, but I'd have to arrange that in the morning. When I spoke to an agent in the morning I was told that since my connecting flight wasn't made through USAir they wouldn't pay for my lodging. When I asked him why they told me otherwise the night before, the agent admitted that they just told me that to get me to leave the counter.

Needless to say, they never replied to the angry letters I wrote to Corporate.
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EVERY time I flew US Air I had issues.

I would NOT leave the counter until I had a hotel voucher and meal vouchers IN HAND.
 
Got the check today. Was reimbursed for expenses. What I learned. Even though you buy it from the airline when you book, it’s an Insurance Company you get it from. The only thing the airline does is give you verification that the flight was cancelled that you then forward to the insurance company. The insurance company process was complicated at first trying to do it online. But it had reps that got on the phone without much delay that walked us through it. I’ll get it again if the trip I’m taking puts me in a situation where a cancellation complicates things. Usually it doesn’t. No big deal, I’ll just go back home and get out tomorrow. That wasn’t the case for this trip.
 
During COVID, pilots of a certain airline staged a "sick out" to protest the shot mandates. The airline claimed the mass cancellations were "due to weather". That is their standard "go to" to avoid the financial hit.
 
JoeInCT said:
During COVID, pilots of a certain airline staged a "sick out" to protest the shot mandates. The airline claimed the mass cancellations were "due to weather". That is their standard "go to" to avoid the financial hit.
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So they called in and said I’m a little under the weather today?:D
 
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