Air Tran?

[starwood]

On our return trip - can we call them to get our seat assignments 24 hours before and then get boarding passes at the airport? We're not bringing a laptop, so can't get seat assignments online.

 

[sheri236]

bumping to see if anyone knows! i think i read somewhere that some hotels will do this for you 24 hours out.

 

[Snurk71]

I believe that I just called the 800 number from the hotel 24 hours prior to our departure and got our seats. Then, we did curbside check-in and printed out the passes there. No problems. Hope that helps.

 

[starwood]

Thanks - we leave in 5 hours for the airport. I'll also ask them there if we can call.

 

[Laurajean1014]

Good luck. We just came back on AirTran and they are very busy. We volunteered to be bumped and got free vouchers for air travel.

Go to the airport early - they tend to not bump if you are an early show!

Have a great time.

 

[starwood]

Well we are back - Never, never, never again will I fly Air Tran. The flights down were terrific. No problems whatsoever. We were due to come home Saturday. There was bad weather in Atlanta and we were late getting in and missed our connecting flight (along with 26 other people on our flight). We were told the next flight they could put us on was Tuesday Night!

We ended up spending the night in a hotel and flying this morning to Baltimore. We then rented a car and drove home.

It is absolutely preposterous to expect someone to wait 3 days to get home. DS goes back to school tomorrow and DH has to go back to work.

It also took them 2 1/2 hours to find our luggage so we could get to the hotel.

 

[DebbieB]

Sorry to hear about your problems. You can get the seat assignment on a laptop and then get the boarding passes printed at the airport, I did it last December.

I'm flying them to FL next weekend. I assume the flights are full since the price has been about $600 for the past couple months. My Delta flight to Atlanta (business trip) was cancelled today, I got put on another 3 hours later. I was talking to a couple on the plane, they were shocked at how full it was, their travel agent told them the flight was empty. I told them how the earlier one was cancelled. I was thinking if the Air Tran flight to MCO was cancelled it would be a big mess because there are no other direct flights, they only have 2 each way and we are on the second.

 

[starwood]

We were flying into and out of Tampa because we couldn't get any decent flights into MCO. I also understand there were 80 people on our flight going to Buffalo. They had just closed the gate when they got there and they refused to let them board. However their luggage WAS on board. They had to spend the night in Atlanta with no luggage.

 

[amylucinda]

When I called Airtran with issues about making our initial online seating assignments, the rep said, "Oh, you could just call the 800 number and we'd do it for you."

So, my friends purposely didn't go back to the villa to choose seats f or their return flight and instead called the 800 number from the parks. They were told, "Oh, no...only certain people can make seat assignments on the phone." So, they had to hoof it back to the villa and do it online.

That is one thing we discovered with Airtran....we constantly got different answers! "Oh, you can't reprint boarding passes later." Yes, you can. "Oh, gatechecked strollers ARE luggage." "Oh, gatechecked strollers may be counted against luggage limits...depends on the airport." "No, gatechecked strollers aren't luggage."

I took to calling repeatedly, and taking names!

 

[welovedis]

starwood-
I'm sorry that you had such a bad experience and you are right, I cannot imagine telling someone that had to wait till Tues for another flight. I am a strong supporter of the airline and now have over 50 flights logged with them. While we run into a problem here or there it is nothing like the issues we've experienced with SWA & USAir. I hope they took care of all of your expenses and hope this doesn't put them completely out of the running for future flights. Glad to hear you got home ok!

 

[starwood]

We are sending them a letter with receipts for all of our expenses. I don't know whether they will pay them or not. The people at the airport basically said "too bad". We had to pay $55 for the hotel, $70 to rent a car, $20 in gas, not sure how much for tolls and food on the way. The expenses to get home were way more than the $69 we paid for the flight (if they had gotten us there).

 

[ribbot]

I also tried to call the 1-800 number from my cell phone while at our hotel to get seating assignments. The rep told me I wasn't qualified to do that because of the type of ticket I had (CHEAP). So that's when I went down to the front desk. I asked if there was anywhere I could get online to do my boarding passes, and she said right here--I can do it for you. It worked out very well for us.

Bad things can happen on any airline, no matter what price you pay. I would have been ticked too if they did that to me. Luck was on our side this whole trip it seems.