Airtran makes no sense at all

[simzac]

Here's the story. I booked our flight home back on April 28. The flight departed Orlando at 2:49 in the afternoon, nonstop flight to Indy. We have to have an afternoon flight as we are doing the 3 night DCL cruise, so a morning departure won't work for us. Thanks to this board, I have been checking our flight for any changes ever since April. Everything was fine until last week when all of a sudden they moved our afternoon nonstop flight up to 11 in the morning. Will not work for us. So I called Airtran immediately, they wanted to put us on a conncecting flight thru Atlanta, I said no deal. I wanted nonstop sometime in the afternoon, so they put us on the 5:47pm flight from MCO to IND. Got our assigned seats switched, so we're back to being ok again. But I continued to check, because if it happened once, it can happen again. It did. They moved our new flight back to 6:25pm. I can live with that. But here's the kicker. Our original flight which was moved up 3 hours was mysteriously moved back 3 hours to 2:19pm. Why in the world would you move a flight up that much for only 1 week, 20 weeks before the flight leaves. My guess is that our travel day is a Sunday, and they felt they could get more money for our seats by jockeying the flight around to get all the previous purchasers such as myself who saved money by booking early to move to connecting flights. I will continue to watch everyday. I have read to many horror stories here on the DIS not to do so. Just wanted to give a heads up to early bookers on Airtran or any other airline for that matter. Check your flights regularly. They might just get switched right out from underneath you.

 

[NancyIL]

The SAME thing happened us, but for Tuesday, Nov. 27th! They changed the same afternoon non-stop MCO-IND (flight # 370) flight time to morning, so I asked them to put us on the evening non-stop. I actually wanted that later flight to begin with, but it was more expensive at the time I bought our tickets. I was checking fares yesterday and noticed that our original flight had been moved back to the afternoon, and our evening flight was leaving Orlando even later. That's not a problem, because we'll have a little more time at WDW. I will continue to monitor flight times and fares up until the day we leave!

 

[brendrek]

That's very sneaky indeed.

 

[jayally]

it's not just airtran. I had 4 flight changes on my united flight I booked with PRICLINE in Jan 2007 for Nov 2007. The last change put me on a different flight than my kids and it took me awhile to figure out why I got a change notice! I called priceline and because of all the changes or maybe because I was nice and not really asking for another change, just put us on the same flight, I got a Non-stop flight from LAX-MCO arriving at 6:30pm, which is what I wanted all along. The length of the nonstop flight was shorter than my first connecting flight which was LAX to wash. DC & then to MCO with a layover in Wash DC. I went from a 10 hr day to a 5 hour day! Sometimes it can be good to let the airliine make changes as then they are then the responsible ones. Priceline would never have allowed the change if it wasn't for the airline.

 

[swilphil]

Does anyone know if Midwest Express changes flights? I'm actually hoping that they do because I want one of the new flight times, but I don't want to pay for the expense of changing our flight.

 

[may_baby06]

I just checked my return flight and they moved it from 1:24 to 12:55. I know its not that much of a time difference but I have limo transportation from BWI to my house which is almost 2 hours away and I need to be sure what time to tell them to pick us up from the airport. Now I don't know what to do? Any suggestions?

 

[FirstTimertoDiz]

This has recently happened to us too- about 2 weeks ago, I had to change flights because I noticed my original flight was completely gone. Last night I checked, and the schedules were different again- almost identical to the ones I had first booked.

Both times I was not notifed by Airtran, and both times they had just put me onto a connecting flight (I keep switching back to nonstop flights.)

Looks like I will be every day from now 'til December.

 

[mom2my3kids]

I get a change of flight schedule in my email when it happens. They have changed the time 3 times now, but only by minutes.. Thank Heavens..

 

[Wigit12]

I booked our first AirTran flight for this October. We normally fly SW.
I regretted it as soon as I booked but now we're stuck due to their cancellation fee. If they change our flight at all, would be able to cancel at all?