Flights changing....

They will let you know--once it is close to your actual flight day. They won't let you know when you are still a few months out, your flight can change again.

They should let passengers know immediately, and not until "closer" to the flight. For my example, the change has us missing the connecting flight. By not letting me know sooner, they were jeopardizing our opportunity to remedy the situation for same day arrival. We had no formal plans that day, but we did have plans to arrive that day.

By my discovery, I was able to have better options. But whatever the definition of "closer to flight is" is not acceptable especially for our circumstance.

Not sure when Missy was arriving, but if she planned to arrive before noon but they now had her arriving at 11pm, that could alter many basic arrival plans where wait it until the last minute to fix could be problematic.

In today's technology--a head's up "we just changed your flight" email is a realistic expectation. No excuse to sit on it for a few months just because it may change again.


And we did have this happen on JetBlue for our October 2012 trip--flight changed twice by just a few minutes. We were emailed close to when that decision was made. No idea if it was immediately, but we were notified both times. (Again, I don't mind minor changes--but they still notified us each time they made a change. Never had lack of notification with anyone other than Delta.)
 
They should let passengers know immediately, and not until "closer" to the flight. For my example, the change has us missing the connecting flight. By not letting me know sooner, they were jeopardizing our opportunity to remedy the situation for same day arrival. We had no formal plans that day, but we did have plans to arrive that day.

By my discovery, I was able to have better options. But whatever the definition of "closer to flight is" is not acceptable especially for our circumstance.

Not sure when Missy was arriving, but if she planned to arrive before noon but they now had her arriving at 11pm, that could alter many basic arrival plans where wait it until the last minute to fix could be problematic.

In today's technology--a head's up "we just changed your flight" email is a realistic expectation. No excuse to sit on it for a few months just because it may change again.


And we did have this happen on JetBlue for our October 2012 trip--flight changed twice by just a few minutes. We were emailed close to when that decision was made. No idea if it was immediately, but we were notified both times. (Again, I don't mind minor changes--but they still notified us each time they made a change. Never had lack of notification with anyone other than Delta.)

Exactly! I'm a pretty laid back person, don't let much bother me but this discovery is uncalled for and can't believe changing the flights is even allowed. I can totally see on the day of the flight due to weather or mechanical issues, then ok but to change it months in advance is not cool. My flight times now are great. The 11pm one was the 1st time they had changed it, which is when I called like 10 mins after discovering the change. It's a huge inconvenience and it can cause disaster at the start of a vacation....for my family to fly, it's nearly $1500. If I pay that money (which is a huge chunk of change for us), I chose the flights and times for a reason, I expect those flights to remain the same, hence the reason I chose them. I'm crossing my fingers that our flights stay the way they are.
 
Exactly! I'm a pretty laid back person, don't let much bother me but this discovery is uncalled for and can't believe changing the flights is even allowed. I can totally see on the day of the flight due to weather or mechanical issues, then ok but to change it months in advance is not cool. My flight times now are great. The 11pm one was the 1st time they had changed it, which is when I called like 10 mins after discovering the change. It's a huge inconvenience and it can cause disaster at the start of a vacation....for my family to fly, it's nearly $1500. If I pay that money (which is a huge chunk of change for us), I chose the flights and times for a reason, I expect those flights to remain the same, hence the reason I chose them. I'm crossing my fingers that our flights stay the way they are.

Changing flight times is allowed, it is in the Contract of Carriage. Your ticket only guarantees they will get you from point A to B on a specific day (unless there are circumstances out of their control). And that is all.

They won't contact you until right before your trip as airlines can change your flight time multiple times. I've had my flight change as many as 4 times before a trip. And yes, I have had one flight change to where my connecting flight was scheduled to take off before my first flight landed. Computers do crazy things! That is why it is prudent to check on your flights from time to time. Only takes a couple of minutes, and will give you peace of mind.
 
I think a lot of times its out of the airlines control. Air traffic control may determine they need to move flights to accommodate all the arrivals and departures. Every flight in the world affects each other. One airline changes the size of one plan and its a ripple affect. It sucks but immagine the problems if they didn't make changes, half empty flights, over booked flights, higher costs. Granted this is just my understanding from being a frequently flyer I could be way off base.

By no mean am i excusing not making people aware they should let you know immediately but I think it's just the cost of flying now. I almost always fly jetblue and have gotten emails 4 or 5 months out about a 3 minute change.
 

Hubby and I have only flown a handful of times and have never had this issue. We're flying for our Disney trip in February and twice now Delta has changed our flights...WITHOUT telling us. The first time I called and complained because it had us getting to MCO at like 11pm, so got it changed to an even much better time that our original flight. Today I noticed that it has been changed again, only leaving 15mins earlier, getting to MCO 20mins sooner, yay. Is this a common thing, or just a Delta thing? It's a PITA, especially since we're vowed to never drive to Disney again, don't want to deal with this every trip.

Recently, it is a lot more common. We had the same thing happen on JetBlue in October where we booked about 5 months out and there were 3 changes before we had the final time set. I didn't remember this ever happening in the past. We usually fly SW as it's easier of us. After talking to a few friends that travel a lot more than I do, they say it changes all the time, especially if it's not a connecting flight.

Have a fun trip!
 
Southwest doesn't change their schedules. You can still always get delayed for weather or whatever, but they don't switch around your flights after you've booked.

They certainly do change their schedule. Plus they currently have a terrible ontime record.
 
They certainly do change their schedule. Plus they currently have a terrible ontime record.

They don't. That's why you can only book a few months at a time. They extend their schedule and the flights available from one schedule to the next may change, but once they set those flights they are set. If you book the flight, that's when it is. There could be an occasional extreme situation (terminal out of use unexpectedly at an airport or something), but it's not like other airlines that book farther out than adjust flights based on how many people are booked and juggle the planes as the dates get nearer. The way they set the schedule, the planes basically have to fly to get to the next stop, so they are going whether they have passengers or not.

I'm not saying that your flight wont' be delayed for hours or days. But it's not shifting from 9am to 9:15am then back to 8am or being moved to another day all together. You don't have to check your flights and hope the airline doesn't move you.
 
Southwest doesn't change their schedules. You can still always get delayed for weather or whatever, but they don't switch around your flights after you've booked.

Actually, our 6:30 am flight with Southwest in a couple of weeks was changed to 6:10 am. They called us thought and let us know.
 
Yes, they can change the flight time as well as cancel flights.

Last time we flew they changed the time, and our seats, we were able to get on a better flight and better seats. But when we arrived and tried to board our connecting flight, my DD did not have a seat. They double booked. The next available flight only had one seat on it. Airline tried to negotiate with some passengers, some were pretty aggressive of what they wanted but lucky for us a nice gentleman volunteered and because he demanded nothing accept next flight they upgraded him to first class and a free ticket.

When we finally boarded the flight someone was sitting in my other DD seat and refused to move because he wanted to sit with his girlfriend. I explained that my DD had some medical issues and we were seated together for that reason. Airline personnel finally intervened on our behalf. His girlfriend glared at us the whole flight. I did suggest she move also but since our seat had extra room and close to exit that she didn't want to. It didn't spoil our flight and just adds to our interesting trips.
 
They don't. That's why you can only book a few months at a time. They extend their schedule and the flights available from one schedule to the next may change, but once they set those flights they are set. If you book the flight, that's when it is. There could be an occasional extreme situation (terminal out of use unexpectedly at an airport or something), but it's not like other airlines that book farther out than adjust flights based on how many people are booked and juggle the planes as the dates get nearer. The way they set the schedule, the planes basically have to fly to get to the next stop, so they are going whether they have passengers or not.

I'm not saying that your flight wont' be delayed for hours or days. But it's not shifting from 9am to 9:15am then back to 8am or being moved to another day all together. You don't have to check your flights and hope the airline doesn't move you.
Obviously from the posts in this thread, sw does change flight times.
 
this happened to me with air transat on our vacation last year we were changed to a flight about 4 hours later and our return trip was changed to 7 hours later. We were compensated with vouchers which allowed us to take our trip to disney in May. However about 2 months after I booked disney with Transat they moved our date from May 2- May 3 and our return date from May 9 to May 10....No compensation this time only told we could cancel without penalty.....I didn't want to cancel so I just kept the reservation even though my first booking was much more convienent for us...Oh well First ever trip to Disney here we come.
 
They certainly do change their schedule. Plus they currently have a terrible ontime record.
Isn't the onetime record for each n every flight listed for the consumer to see? Usually a bump in time is because a flight that was before it, or an earlier continuation was delayed...breather, mechanical whatever.
I only take non stop flights and choose early morning flights, especially when it's into orlando. And though I used to want to take late afternoon/ evening flights..delays are more common, so we tried to avoid as best we could. I used to hear about AirTran just moving a flight hours ( which Sw took over) wonder if that is still happening on those flights.
I thought that if a flight was moved more than...was it 2 hours, they had to comp something? Not sure where I heard it, but never hurts to ask. Hope ur flight is event less and ur trip, magical OP. enjoy
 
I should clarify as to why our flights for this March changed by a day. We are flying out of our home airport through JFK on Jet Blue and then heading to Ft. Myers, FL. Our first flight time changed by 15 minutes later and the connecting flight changed by 15 minutes earlier. It only gave us a 30 minute window to change flights at JFK. So Jet Blue rebooked us on an earlier flight, thinking they were helping us. However I had deliberately booked an evening flight so we could leave after my husband and I got home from work and didn't lose a day traveling. We couldn't take the earlier flight. There were no other flights offered that day that we could do. So we had to book for 6 am the next morning. I am not happy about it, but the flight gets us to Ft. Myers early in the day so we don't lose the whole day traveling. Since we are visiting my in-laws and not going to Disney which would cost us one day of hotel, I can live with it, especially since my in-laws paid for the flight.
 
It's pretty common and sometimes a glitch happens and you don't get an email in advance, so you ALWAYS want to check your flights via your confirmation number periodically (at least weekly) before an upcoming flight.

Another big thing- sometimes your flight will change and they will put you on another flight. You often lose your seat assignments that you picked. Sometimes even ones you paid extra from. You could be separated from your kids. You'll want to keep on top of this well in advance and not be surprised at the airport when they have not sent you an email about the changes. Don't assume when there is a flight time change that you are still in your same seats that you picked originally.
 
They don't. That's why you can only book a few months at a time. They extend their schedule and the flights available from one schedule to the next may change, but once they set those flights they are set. If you book the flight, that's when it is. There could be an occasional extreme situation (terminal out of use unexpectedly at an airport or something), but it's not like other airlines that book farther out than adjust flights based on how many people are booked and juggle the planes as the dates get nearer. The way they set the schedule, the planes basically have to fly to get to the next stop, so they are going whether they have passengers or not.

I'm not saying that your flight wont' be delayed for hours or days. But it's not shifting from 9am to 9:15am then back to 8am or being moved to another day all together. You don't have to check your flights and hope the airline doesn't move you.

I am a huge SW fan...my airline of choice, never an issue, etc. However, we have had many of our flights change time. Nothing major, but 1/2 hour here, there, etc. It happens frequently.
 
Southwest doesn't change their schedules. You can still always get delayed for weather or whatever, but they don't switch around your flights after you've booked.

Our last Southwest flight was moved back by more than an hour to 6:15 am and there were many people on the transportation board saying their flights had been changed around the same time. It's not a regular occurrence but it happens. And FWIW, we were all on different reservation numbers because we booked with flight credits. Some of us were notified.. some weren't. They also needed us to call in and confirm the change and when the change was made two of us had our early bird check in dropped. Thankfully I thought to call back and check and discovered the error and had it reinstated. It pays to check your flights periodically no matter who you are flying with.
 
I can't remember a flight change (barring weather/mechanical) that we haven't gotten an email or voice mail notification about in the last 10 years or so. We got a notification about a change over a month ago for an AA flight on Memorial Day weekend 2015. We usually fly AA, Jet Blue, and SW, but we sometimes fly United, Continental, or Delta. We usually book through the airline website.

Why are others not receiving notification? Is there something that has to be enabled or setup? They usually ask for your email, I thought.
 
I can't remember a flight change (barring weather/mechanical) that we haven't gotten an email or voice mail notification about in the last 10 years or so. We got a notification about a change over a month ago for an AA flight on Memorial Day weekend 2015. We usually fly AA, Jet Blue, and SW, but we sometimes fly United, Continental, or Delta. We usually book through the airline website.

Why are others not receiving notification? Is there something that has to be enabled or setup? They usually ask for your email, I thought.

Continental ceased operations in March 2012 (merged with United), so I don't think you've flown them too recently, ;)

I'm a 1K on United and they never email about flight changes; same for many other airlines. You need to check your reservation occasionally, where changes will be noted.
 
It's pretty common and sometimes a glitch happens and you don't get an email in advance, so you ALWAYS want to check your flights via your confirmation number periodically (at least weekly) before an upcoming flight.

Another big thing- sometimes your flight will change and they will put you on another flight. You often lose your seat assignments that you picked. Sometimes even ones you paid extra from. You could be separated from your kids. You'll want to keep on top of this well in advance and not be surprised at the airport when they have not sent you an email about the changes. Don't assume when there is a flight time change that you are still in your same seats that you picked originally.

You are referring to an "equipment swap," where the aircraft type changes, not the flight.
 

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