Its nice that airline called to tell me plane was delayed

[ghostjmf]

Its not so nice that they called my work # on a Sunday to do it.

Oh well.

After one cancelled flight for which I was given a nice motel room, then a 6:15 am
replacement flight for which we all were kept on the plane for an extra hour while they tried to fix something wrong, but couldn't, then a rebooking (for the whole planeful), then a re-rebooking when they eventually fixed our original plane after all, I got back.

I have to say USAir is the only airline who has ever called me about drastic flight changes; others have just let you find out when you got to the airport. As I did with this one, because they called the wrong #; they were clearly designated "work" vs "home". I guess the message is "never give an airline any # you can't call day or night for messages".

[sunflower]

I think Orbitz or Expedia or Travelocity do that as well. I never really use those, I usually book direct with the airline, but I know co-workers have told me they've gotten phone calls from one of the travel agency sites.

[Paddy O'Furniture]

USAir was very helpful in calling to say the flight was cancelled. Only they called here an hour before the flight was scheduled to leave, which was an international flight, for which you have to be present more than an hour in advance. If you haven't left home yet and hour before the flight, you're more of an idiot than they are....

[Jeemie]

USAir was very helpful in calling to say the flight was cancelled. Only they called here an hour before the flight was scheduled to leave, which was an international flight, for which you have to be present more than an hour in advance. If you haven't left home yet and hour before the flight, you're more of an idiot than they are....

What if you live at the airport?

[Paddy O'Furniture]

USAir was very helpful in calling to say the flight was cancelled. Only they called here an hour before the flight was scheduled to leave, which was an international flight, for which you have to be present more than an hour in advance. If you haven't left home yet an hour before the flight, you're more of an idiot than they are....

What if you live at the airport?

Those chairs need a nice coat of green paint! I should live at the airport!

[ghostjmf]

sunflower says:

I think Orbitz or Expedia or Travelocity do that as well. I never really use those, I usually book direct with the airline, but I know co-workers have told me they've gotten phone calls from one of the travel agency sites.

Y'know (which of course really means "as I am now gonna tell to you"), the caller didn't ID themself as being from USAir, though they discussed my USAir flight. They didn't say "from Expedia" either, but this was the 1st flight I've booked through Expedia. So it might have actually been Expedia doing the calling. To the work # even though it was Sunday. I mean, they couldn't have known about the mechanical failure 2 days ahead. I hope.

I booked via Expedia because I could only get the times I wanted (if I had really gotten them, that is!) by flying Delta down & USAir back, as I found out on the Expedia site. In the past, I've gotten such information via one of the 3 agencies you mentioned, then called up the airline I would leave on & said "I want to being flying your company out & the other company back; can you book this?". They were always happy to, whichever airline I called. OK, so I only did this once before, but I could see it would be an "always happy to" sort of situation. Especially when I mentioned I was going for this round trip either way, but I'd prefer to book with an airline directly, & they didn't want to have to pay a commission to Expedia, or whomever.

What has changed is that the airlines now all charge $15-$20.00 to book your flight over the phone. And Expedia only charges $7.00 to book via them on the web. And the airlines themselves usually charge around the same price as Expedia et al, on the web. So I've sadly forsaken booking by phone with for the cold, cold web. But if I ever see a situation where we're talking "whole trip on one airline" but I just can't get the good out flight time & good back flight time together on the same trip, yet can see them each listed for the same price but part of different round trips, I will pay the extra fee to talk to the airline; I know they can put the round trip I want together, because they've done this for me at least a couple times in the past. At least 2 times. Really have. Its good to book via the humans.

[kayrharris]

I get notified by email (which I can get via my Blackberry) & text message if a flight is changed,
delayed or canceled. It's not always in enough time to keep me from leaving for the airport, due to
the fact that I have to drive 100 miles to get to it, but it is kinda nice to know about it even if I am
in the car on my way there.

[ghostjmf]

I give the airlines my e-mail, even though checking it on a trip is hopeless (professors have complained about the slowness of remote mail checking here, but it has yet to be fixed). I don't have a Blackberry, but when I'm visiting my family I do have use of their computer; I use it to look up my flight, because any delay will show there too. The drive to the biggest local airport (the one I've been flying into ever since the home-town airport lost most of its flights) from home-town is 70 miles, & if we have more time to make it in, we like to know.

When the flight is screwed up, I always check my e-mail, when I get back, to see if I had been notified. I never have been, not once. (I wasn't for this one by e-mail either, but I did at least get that call.)

And the only other phone message I've gotten regarding flight changes is when Continental called re one of my upcoming flights with them & a human voice said "your flight on day X has been changed". But didn't tell me what aspect had been changed. I had to call them to find out time was the same (big sigh of relief here), but the flight # had been changed.

[trevor_macfee]

When we were coming back from Vegas (from the TOC), our plane east was supposed to leave at 2 Sunday afternoon. We were on our way from church to the airport when US Air called my cellphone to tell me the plane was delayed 2 hours.

That was great because it gave us time to detour to Hoover Dam and see some stuff we wouldn't have otherwise.

The plane ended up being delayed over 6 hours, which was frustrating but much more bearable because of the call (so we didn't have to endure the whole delay at the airport) AND the fact that US Air gave us credits of $100 each for future travel for my family (not for me though as J! had made and paid for my flight).

Just the fact that they e-mailed an apology a few weeks later makes me much more likely to fly US Air again.

[vettech]

I was to fly to NYC last summer (to try out for BAM, of course). The airport we were flying out of is 2 hours away and we had an early a.m. flight with US Air so we went down the night before. The weather was bad the next day so I checked online, saw the flight had been canceled and there wasn't another one that would get me there in time to audition. They were very nice and refunded my money (I expected to just get credit since it was non-refundable). When we got home later, there was a message on the machine about the cancellation, so they did make an attempt. It all added up to make a disappointing situation tolerable. Unlike Continental, who knows absolutely nothing about customer service, but that's a whole other story.