Warning! Check your Delta flight reservations!

[Cathyb]

We made our reservations about 4 months ago by telephone and went online to see if there were any changes. Welllllll......

Our flight from Los Angeles arrived in Atlanta 4 hours later than our connecting flight to Fort Meyers and no further flights available that day!

A call to Delta got the comment "Whoops, something is wrong here". This was not frequent flier usage and in fact we paid premium money to get the proper daytime connections. They put us on an earlier flight which makes us lose our car rental because they are not open at 4AM.

As we chew nails here, fellt Tuggers should be alerted.

[bogey21]

In today's world of uncertainty I continually check everything. It paid off for you and has for me in the past.

GEORGE

[dougp26364]

It's not just Delta, it's all U.S. carriers. This happens to us infrequently but it does happen. The first rule of flying is to check your reservations and seat assignments. The second rule of flying is bring a book. If you've got time to spare, go by air!

[grest]

This has happened to me too...I check all the time, not just with Delta. Their computer changes one flight without any knowledge of the other...Fortunately, it just takes a quick call: airlines have always been helpful about making something work out.
Connie

[JoAnn]

It happened to us too. DD used her FF miles to get us to Seattle next month (this was done 6 months ago) and she did some checking when I told her one of "our" seats was available. Our flight from Ft. Myers to ATL got in one hour AFTER our flight to Seattle left. She called Delta and had them put us on an earlier flight out of RSW. And there have been two time changes in flights since then. Now I check every week and will have her check while we are on tour out west....just in case. She commutes weekly from RSW to Columbus OH and says her flights are changed constantly.

[ronandjoan]

Originally Posted by Cathyb

They put us on an earlier flight which makes us lose our car rental because they are not open at 4AM.

This happened once to me and no more - I always get a company which is open 24/7, just in case

[luvmypt]

Our Delta flights have been changed five times so far and even though I'm on the 'notify me if a change occurs' list, I have not once got an email to let me know a major change took place. That's why I now check our reservations with Delta once or twice a week. One nice thing about one of our flight changes, we now get to spend a full 24 hours in Dublin before flying home. It was either that or spend a night in Atlanta.

Don

[laxmom]

Delta changed our layover at LAX on our way back from Oahu in Nov. from 1 1/2 hours to 25 minutes. We called because our seat assignments disapeared from our reservations online when I checked. We hadn't gotten any email notification of the change either. My DH called today and they changed our flight to go thru Atlanta instead. I will be watching very closely.

[JoAnn]

I just checked DH & DS's flight to MSP in mid October and Delta changed that both the flights going and coming. On the return leg Delta has the guys getting into ATL 20 minutes AFTER their plane to RSW leaves. I called DD, who used FF miles to get their flight, and she is calling Delta to get it straightened out.

Since we are leaving for SEA in 10 days..I am checking our flights quite often. And before we leave SEA, I'll either call DD or Delta to see what changes have been made.

[Lloydwa1]

Our Delta flight has also been cancelled. This will require us to spend an extra night in Atlanta or St Maartin. Can anyone help with suggestions of how to cancell the Delta flight and buy from a different carrier? Questions are--Will Delta allow me to cancell because of the change? Can you hold tickets found on another airlines long enough to insure being able to complete the change. I would not want to risk being left without a flight or a greater cost so would like to hold the Delta flight while trying to arrange for a better schedule.
Thanks, Lloyd

[tashamen]

Originally Posted by Lloydwa1

Our Delta flight has also been cancelled. This will require us to spend an extra night in Atlanta or St Maartin.

This may not in fact be true, though obviously I don't know when you're traveling. We had FF tickets on Delta to SXM in July through Atlanta that I had booked a while back. Then I happened to see in my account online that they had supposedly canceled the flight back, and when I called them they let me redeposit the miles for free. However a week later the flight miraculously was back flying again, even though the Delta agent on the phone had said that it was being discontinued. So we ended up paying for two flights on American, rather than using the Delta FF miles as originally planned - and if I had not been so quick to call about the original flights they would have been fine.

But if the flights really have been changed so that you now have an overnight, they will either refund your money or your FF miles. You should also ask if they can put you on flights on Continental to SXM, one of their partners which flies there.

[Dave M]

All you have to do is call Delta. Ask them again if there is any way to schedule you to avoid the overnight and to make the connections reasonable. If not, ask them to refund your money, presumably by crediting the amount to the credit card you used. They will process the full refund with no questions asked and there will be no fee for canceling your tickets.

The "Contracts of Carriage" (the fine print) for most or all U.S. airlines include language allowing ticketed passengers to cancel tickets and obtain a full refund when the airline makes schedule changes that significantly inconvenience passengers. Typically, those rules require a schedule change of at least two hours to automatically qualify for a full refund. That limitation prevents you from successfully demanding a full refund for a trip that, for other reasons, you no longer want to take when the airline makes a change that (for example) changes your departure time by only two minutes.

[luvmypt]

Delta offered to give us a full refund because of the changes they made with our flights. Prior to me calling Delta, I search for new airfares to match our itineraries and the price per ticket on another airline was $400 more per person. There are four of going so that would have been $1600. Originally, we were suppose to fly from Faro Portugal to Dublin and then on to Atlanta on December 30th. We are still flying from Faro to Dublin on the 30th but instead of flying on to Atlanta we are overnighting in Dublin and then flying from there to JFK on the 31st. It was a lot cheaper to do the overnight in Dublin then to buy all new tickets on another airline.

Don

[Art]

As I noted in the other string about Delta FF tickets, I recently called Delta SkyMiles about a schedule change that gave me impossible connections.

I was referred to the "problem resolution" desk and was told that I could have my choice of any flight on which there were any (not just FF) seats available. The agent even told me about a flight that I couldn't see on-line which was the absolutely ideal connection. Of course, now I have to wait and see if the new flights are rescheduled.

Art

[laxmom]

You won't believe this. I got a call from Delta asking if I would be interested in flying out of Cincinnati instead of Columbus, Ohio for our November trip to Oahu. I chose Columbus because the fare is so much cheaper. I got $575 pp airfare to Oahu compared to $950 out of Cincinnati. I said sure!! She offered us a nonstop on our return and a flight that leaves here 2 hours earlier and gets into Honolulu 5 hours earlier. Our return flight leaves at 5pm and arrives at CVG at 7:30 am instead of leaving at 10:00 pm Saturday and arriving in Columbus at 5pm Sunday. All at no extra cost. And just when I thought Delta had really lost it. I will still keep an eye on our seat assignments though!