Matt Molnar
2008-03-24, 03:06 PM
As mentioned in the Upcoming Trips thread, the lady and I booked a trip to Europe in mid-April, starting in Seville. At the time we were planning this, JFK-MAD-SVQ followed by LHR-JFK on AA+Iberia was around $1200, so came up with a creative routing for the first leg, a JFK-STN redeye on American, followed by a 6 hour layover, and then on to SVQ via a cheap flight aboard Ryanair.
AA last week informed us they had canceled our flight...apparently with the new Open Skies agreement taking effect this week, they've rerouted their second STN flight to LHR. Undoubtedly they knew they were going to do this months ago, yet allowed people to book the flight anyway. The remaining flight leaves almost four hours earlier which would cause us to miss an extra 1/2 day of work, and would get us to STN just in time to miss the morning Ryanair flight by about 10 minutes, leaving us with a solid 10 hour layover. 6 hours was borderline silly on our part, but 10 hours that isn't our fault is unbearable. We could hang out in London for the day, but transport for two people between the airports will add up to quite a bit, and we're ending our trip with a couple days in London anyway.
We called AA, and they were not very helpful...
a. They'll rebook us on an LHR flight with a shorter layover, but will not compensate us for our transit to STN.
b. They'll cancel our reservation without penalty
c. They'll rebook us on their Iberia codeshare to SVQ via Madrid, but we'd pay about $150 extra for each of us.
d. They refuse to honor the 10% coupon we originally booked the flight with if we rebook on the Iberia flight.
We're leaning toward option C because it is simple will get us to SVQ much earlier. Had the fare been as low when we were originally booking as it is now we would have booked that in the first place. It seems pretty likely we will, however, lose over $150 we gave to Ryanair.
AA's lack of assistance is infuriating as this is clearly their fault for letting people plan travel around flights they knew would not exist.
So what do you guys think? Any thoughts on ways to continue pressing AA? Should I attempt to dispute the Ryanair transaction with my credit card issuer?
AA last week informed us they had canceled our flight...apparently with the new Open Skies agreement taking effect this week, they've rerouted their second STN flight to LHR. Undoubtedly they knew they were going to do this months ago, yet allowed people to book the flight anyway. The remaining flight leaves almost four hours earlier which would cause us to miss an extra 1/2 day of work, and would get us to STN just in time to miss the morning Ryanair flight by about 10 minutes, leaving us with a solid 10 hour layover. 6 hours was borderline silly on our part, but 10 hours that isn't our fault is unbearable. We could hang out in London for the day, but transport for two people between the airports will add up to quite a bit, and we're ending our trip with a couple days in London anyway.
We called AA, and they were not very helpful...
a. They'll rebook us on an LHR flight with a shorter layover, but will not compensate us for our transit to STN.
b. They'll cancel our reservation without penalty
c. They'll rebook us on their Iberia codeshare to SVQ via Madrid, but we'd pay about $150 extra for each of us.
d. They refuse to honor the 10% coupon we originally booked the flight with if we rebook on the Iberia flight.
We're leaning toward option C because it is simple will get us to SVQ much earlier. Had the fare been as low when we were originally booking as it is now we would have booked that in the first place. It seems pretty likely we will, however, lose over $150 we gave to Ryanair.
AA's lack of assistance is infuriating as this is clearly their fault for letting people plan travel around flights they knew would not exist.
So what do you guys think? Any thoughts on ways to continue pressing AA? Should I attempt to dispute the Ryanair transaction with my credit card issuer?