I don’t think you lost anyting. Your emeployers did.

Your cruise came off as scheduled with your being brought back to the airport at the proper time. Unfortunately something delayed your flight home from there.

Granted, had you known that your flight was cancelled jstn as your cruise concluded, you would have had a bonus day to spend before your flight home the next day.

About that time, they sent us an E-mail message informing us that our flight had been cancelled and we had been re-booked on the flight schedule to leave at 8 am the next morning. Either they booked us in for a flight that had already been cancelled, or they sent us a message at home after we were in the system at the airport. Either way, an effective information system would have made a huge difference. There was NO announcement until 45 minutes before the flight was supposed to leave, when my husband and a few other would-be passengers started asking questions about the lack of posting at the gate. They finally asked everyone booked on our flight to report to the gate. The gate agent did not seem to know that we had already been re-booked and spent several minutes trying to find us seats on another flight. Or course we did not know that we had already been re-booked until we got home the next day and read our E-mail.

We were then told to go back to the ticket desk to get our luggage and vouchers for a hotel. We would have been better off at that point just walking out to the front, getting a cab and paying for our own room and meals for the night.

Downstairs, we were directed to the end of the line of people who were checking in for flights. After 20 minutes we reached the ticket agent who gave us a voucher for the Marriott and six meal vouchers (which we tought was very generous until we realized that they were each for $7) and told us that it was “too late” to retrieve our luggage. Actually, our luggage was still there and didn’t leave the airport until we did the next morning. Later that evening, at the hotel, we met another couple from the same flight. They had given up on the shuttle and taken a taxi. They also had their luggage. Seems that when the ticket agent told them that it was too late to get their luggage, this retired colonel just stood his ground and suddenly their luggage was available afterall.

Outside, we stood, waiting 45 minutes for the Marriott shuttle that took us to a hotel/conference center in an industrial district adjacent to the airport. We didn’t know our way around Miami well enough to have any idea how to get anywhere from there. The hotel was under re-furbishment. So there we sat, with no luggage, no coffee shop, no snack bar, no gift shop; just an excellent (and expensive) restaurant and a front desk that that provided free toothbrushes and toothpaste and had for sale a few things like tylenol and deodorant.

Making the best of it, we stettled in for a nice (really nice) dinner. The waiter confirmed that we could use all six vouchers for the one meal. If we had stuck to ice water and appetizers (and stiffed the waiter) we probably could have brought our dinner bill in for under the total of $42 in vouchers Delta had given us for food. But we decided to take advantage of the what was a really good restaurant and both had salads and entrees. We even “splurged” on iced tea and gave the waiter his well-deserved 20% tip. The total bill was $98.86.

The next morning we were on the first shuttle to the airport in order to get some breakfast and catch our early flight. On the Atlanta to Albuquerque leg of the flight, we purchased sandwiches. We had to laugh, Delta’s meal vouchers allow $7 for a meal. Their in-flight, food-for-purchase turkey sandwich was $8.

In the end, we each lost a day of paid leave, missed meetings and appointments scheduled for our first day back our respective jobs, spent 36 hours in the same clothes, and lost all confidence in Delta’s ability or willingness to communicate efficiently or honestly with their customers. We complained to Royal Caribbean, who muttered something about scheduling flights as a convenience to their passengers and declined our request for a contacte number to call Delta. In all honesty, we could have taken the time to start up through the system at Delta, but we had already figured out that it they cared in the first place, they would have announced the cancelation of the flight and let us have our luggage back.
If I need to be able to check my E-mail at the airport in order to fly, I need to find another airline. Actually, we will be flying to and from Miami again in January 2010 — on American.

Also, the “Mr. Wong should have checked in 24 hours prior” argument is a bad one. Mr. Wong should have been able to check-in within 60 minutes of his flight without any trouble. Also, the fact that Mr. Wong was the only one (on his flight) arguing with the CSRs at the airport near the original time of departure means that “everyone” else was notified.

…And, since we are talking about California here, if this did happen and Mr. Wong wasn’t the only one affected, there would probably be a massive lawsuit against Delta for it – Californians love lawyers! :-)

@Bob: I don’t think he’s a nut and I simply disagreed with the statement.

I just remembered about a friend showing up at the airport and finding out that his flight had left 12 hours earlier because he misread the time – it was an international flight from LAX to TPE and he didn’t realize that it left at a few minutes past midnight instead of a few minutes past noon. I’ve done redeyes from LAX to BOS before, and I don’t recall any of them departing around the midnight hour; most of them left around 9-10pm or so.

I really would like to see some of these posters degrees

Bachelor of Arts from the School Of Hard Knocks. This thing’s an art sometimes. :)

“Shifted up nearly half a day” could mean 12 hours, or it could mean, say, flight moved from 5:00 pm to 1:00 pm, or 1:00 pm to 9:00 am – half of an “eight hour” day. I can envision some people who live fairly near an airport not checking on a flight’s status until three or four hours before departure, on the assumption that the only thing to worry about is whether the flight has been delayed further upstream. Obviously, there’s more to worry about.

And yes, anyone who travels regularly has learned the benefit of checking in 24 hours in advance, printing boarding passes at home, all that good stuff. I find it hard to believe sometimes that everyone doesn’t do these things, but I know some don’t.

I do think Joe’s got the right idea. Unfortunately, one hand often doesn’t know what the other is doing at a company as big as Delta, and the collections process may be something automatically kicked in because of the chargeback. Until it gets to the level of someone at Delta who realizes they’re (a) likely to lose the case and (b) probably will never collect on the ticket, the threats will continue. A lawsuit tends to get attention because it ends up in the legal department, and they’re presumably able to yank the idiots from collections, scheduling, notification, or wherever in to find out what’s going on to answer the suit. That may be enough for the lawyer to say “Cut a deal with him, NOW”.

Do airlines still have a rule requiring the passenger to reconfirm flights X hours in advance?

It’s not really a rule. But I’ve had cases where people complained we didn’t and/or should’ve told them to reconfirm their trip 24 hours (for domestic) or up to 72 hours (for international) before departure, so we’ve been telling them those things ever since.

My guess is those airlines get that same problem, which is why they’ve been telling people to reconfirm, recheck, etc. their trips before they leave. And we’re not even necessarily obligated to do that, but we do it anyway to save us unwanted headaches.

Now, we can all argue all eternity whose obligation it is to do what for who. But like I said, everyone’s going to decide on their own what they will be, and I don’t know how one can “force” it on another unless agreed upon…

….or short of suing in court, maybe.

But I maintain that is an unfair burden for ordinary travel. Anyone who is a frequent traveler has far too many travel obligations to routinely confirm that the provider is one top of things.

It is indeed an unfair burden, just as we travel vendors have the arguably unfair burden of telling people what they want or demand to know, especially for certain things (e.g. visa requirements) that might not be posted online. At the end of the day, it pretty much boils down to knowing what one’s doing and getting themselves into.

If someone wants to hold another liable for some perceived wrongdoing, then I wish that person good luck doing so.

Now if the flight was moved back, then the passenger wll be notified when he gets to the airport.

Aside from the need to reconfirm, it is not the passenger’s obligation to keep checking even though it is desirable to keep checking for such purposes as reslecting seats..

I disagree on the competent and qualified since if you are competent you have checked to see when the flight leaves. The advantage to flying one self is that since I’m the pilot – I never miss my plane.

As for the qualified part, well, if you know that you are doing when it comes to traveling, then you know what you are doing, hence qualified!

I heard one story whereby a person was told by a ‘legacy’ airline that when a customer bought a new ticket on a competitor to reach a destination the first carrier told him was ‘closed’ and would not open until the morning that his failure to buy a ticket on WN for $299 and buying a $787 ticket on AA, he failed to properly mitigate his damages. That was a pretty brazen defense on the part of the carrier.

OTOH – we were sked on a nonstop to Chicago out of Maui about 4 years ago when there was a blizzard in Chicago which prevented the departure. AA protected us, in First class [we did have F class tickets], on the Dallas flight which left an hour earlier. And they called us. We got into Hartford about 3 later than planned which considering it could have been days later was pretty good.

Orbitz, UA, and most airlines have an automated service which sends text messages to your phone updating you on schedule changes, cancellations, etc but you have to sign up for it. I’ve never been affected by a major schedule change that I wasn’t notified by the airline and/or Orbitz (when I use them) – but I also double check my reservation 24 hours in advance via the email notice from the airline. My personal reason is that I tend to forget when my flight leaves and I’ve missed way too many flights because I *assumed* I knew when it was supposed to leave and was wrong.

Chris hasn’t stated whether a collection agency HAS contacted Mr. Wong, or whether Delta THREATENED to send him to collection. There is a difference to the response needed. Also, which charge did Mr. Wong dispute – the first charge, the second charge (since he needed to buy a new ticket at SMF) or both? I personally would have only disputed the second charge and let the first one go, because Delta did fulfill their obligation (transport Mr. Wong from SMF to BOS).

@Joe, not true about the competent and the qualified, because people make mistakes. Agree with you on the rest, though.

At a previous firm, I used to book flights for after work due to early morning meetings, court appearances, etc. I couldn’t take an earlier flight on either the outbound or inbound flights because my schedules were not flexible. So even if an airline notified me timely about a flight change, I wouldn’t be able to or even inclined to change my schedule by hours and hours to accomodate the airlines.

THE BOOKING AGENT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR NOTIFYING THE CUSTOMER OF CHANGES.

If the airline is the booking agent, then voila, it is the airline’s responsibility. More and more people, however, book off random websites no one has ever heard of. The website (a.k.a. online agency) or travel agent, etc. are responsible to update you if you purchased a ticket from them.

Also, there is the issue of contact information. I see many people’s bookings (usually from agencies) with ZERO contact information. The airline could not contact these people under any circumstances.

THEN, there are those people who ignore the contact attempts. People get automated voicemails — probably don’t even listen to them — or e-mails and never follow-up. Most likely they intend to get to it and forget. But then they claim they were never contacted when we know they received two phone calls and three e-mails.

Everything is always someone else’s fault.