ATA - Midway, More bad news...

[dislvr75]

After everything that we've been thru weathering the ups and downs of ATA and Midway, will they stay, will they go, will Southwest bail them out????

My travel agent called me to tell me that as of February 1st, ATA will no longer fly non-stops to MCO!!! I bought tickets for our family of four back in August, just days before their bankrupcy announcement. I held on to the tickets in the hopes they would still be worth something in May when we travel. I was called by an automated system, just 5 days ago, to tell me that the flight number on my inbound flight had changed, and that the flight times of both our flights had changed as well. One flight was pushed up 40 minutes and the other only a few minutes. I called to speak to a service rep (on hold for 29 minutes) to verify the changes. She verified exactly what I had written down. So everything was ok, right?

Wrong. Now its 5 days later and I call again to verify since my travel agent has just called and told me otherwise, and sure enough he says, "Oh, I'm sorry, you're right, that flight no longer exists! We no longer offer non-stop service to Orlando, only service with a change in Indy."

So when was ATA going to get around to telling me that neither flight existed, that there were no more non-stops flights from Midway to Orlando and did I mind stopping and changing planes in Indianapolis!!!!

I would be spitting mad if I wasn't given a full refund. I am SO happy I have finally washed my hands of ATA, I shall not purchase tickets with them ever again!!

Please for those of you out there with existing, non-stop flights to Orlando from Midway on ATA call immediately and find out what's going on!

Good Luck!!

 

[tycon07]

I would fly with SWA because of their perormance record and their reliability. Ever since ATA reorganized back in 2001, they have gone downhill.

 

[dudspizza]

I would venture to guess that this is affected by the fact the Southwest flys non-stop to MCO. ATA and SWA are aligning their routes to save some money and at the same time make more money.

Duds

 

[jkfreeman33]

We have tickets to MCO for 2/16 to 2/23 on ATA and they re-booked us on a SWA non stop flights at about the same time. I just hate the "cattle call" on SWA and would rather have an assigned seat. I paid $151.50 round trip for the ATA tickets, so I can't complain.

I'm sorry to see ATA leave MDW. We live in the south suburbs and it's so much easier to go to Midway than O'Hare.

 

[tinkerbellmagic]

I would be spitting mad if I wasn't given a full refund. I am SO happy I have finally washed my hands of ATA, I shall not purchase tickets with them ever again!!

Please for those of you out there with existing, non-stop flights to Orlando from Midway on ATA call immediately and find out what's going on!

Good Luck!!

Hi, Thanks so much for the update. Our situation is similar to yours, but we are flying in March. We booked in Aug right before the rumors and bad news. I have been dying to wash my hands of ATA, but thought I was stuck. We paid approximately $500 for each rt ticket.

*****UPDATE*****
A big thank you to the op for this information. I called ATA (total hold time was 50 mins between two agents) and cancelled my reservation for a full refund. Wow, I've been praying for a break like this!

Now to see if I can find new flights for that busy time.

Tink

 

[EdDome]

I'm holding June reservations and haven't heard about no non-stops until now. Has ATA contacted anyone or is this based on talking to an agent? ATA has been pretty good with letting you know about changes. If I could get a cash refund (no chance!), I'd go with SW. Oh well.....

 

[tinkerbellmagic]

I'm holding June reservations and haven't heard about no non-stops until now. Has ATA contacted anyone or is this based on talking to an agent? ATA has been pretty good with letting you know about changes. If I could get a cash refund (no chance!), I'd go with SW. Oh well.....

We are flying during busy spring break. I've been checking our flights almost daily. The times have changed about 3 times, but within reasonable time frames. ATA did not contact me. I found out about the no non-stops from reading this board (thank you, DIS'ers!!!). As I said in my previous post, I called ATA today, cancelled our flights, and the entire amount will be credited to my cc card within 7-14 days. I can't tell you what a relief this is. I went ahead and booked with SWA. I'm VERY happy!

Tink

 

[kikipug]

We have tickets to MCO for 2/16 to 2/23 on ATA and they re-booked us on a SWA non stop flights at about the same time. I just hate the "cattle call" on SWA and would rather have an assigned seat.

As a frequent SWA flyer... a piece of advice... print your boarding pass from home (or from your hotel when you are on vacation... use the business center in your hotel)... as long as you print early enough (you can print at 12:01AM that day), you will end up in group A... that's the first 30 people on the plane... you're pretty much guaranteed whatever seat you want at that point. I have never been in any other group than A by taking that approach.

And if you have kids under 4, it doesn't matter what you do, as they will pre-board you anyway.

 

[thomasc]

We also got rebooked to a SW flight. So do we check in at SW or ATA?