Airline Rip off

[Toro]

I'll have to chalk this one off to my own stupidty. I booked a LV vacation about a month ago for the first week in February for 5 days/4 nights. Driving in to work today out of the blue, it dawns on me that I've got us leaving on Super Bowl Sunday, February 6 @ 4:00 P.M.

WTF, we're going to be on the plane during the Super Bowl. Long story short, I change the reservations and it's going to cost $275 each just to change the flight. What a rip-off!

Moral: Make sure you get it right the first time because the airlines got you by the balls and there's nothing you can do about it.

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

Not only that, but what the hell were you doing booking it for any sunday and not the instant you could get off work on Friday/Thursday (or Wednesday or Tuesday)? You're missing valuable weekend days and that's -EV.

[andyfox]

I have a friend who has a million miles on American. He needed to be in San Jose (he lives in Los Angeles) for a Monday morning 10 AM meeting so he took the first American flight out of L.A. All three Bay Area airports were fogged in so the plane, after circling for an hour, turned back and landed in L.A. He rescheduled his meeting for Wendesday morning and resolved to fly out on Tuesday night so as to avoid the same problem.

When he called to re-schedule, he was told it would cost him $50 to change flights. He said he was not changing flights, his first flight never arrived at the destination. American told him he had been re-booked on the "next available" flight from L.A. to San Jose, the 11 AM Monday flight. He responded that he didn't need the 11 AM Monday flight since his meeting in San Jose was supposed to be at 10.

They insisted he would have to pay the $50. He asked them if then knew how many thousands of dollars they had spent on him, keeping him a customer for so many years and if they thought it made sense to jeopardize losing his business for fifty bucks. They said they didn't know how much they had spent, this was their policy. He reminded them that nobody flies American from L.A. to the Bay Area (Southwest and United are the airlines of choice), that whenever he flies up on American the flights are, at most, half full, and usually cost more than either Southwest or United.

They charged him the $50.

I once asked a Southwest agent at the airport if what they were trying to do to me struck him as rational. He gave me a blank stare. I'm not sure if he knew what the word "rational" meant.

Delta might go chapter 11 this weekend.

[Leo99]

They all suck. Every seat on the plane costs a different price. If you pay $1000 for a $200 seat, you can change without the $50 charge. It's just a bus that flies.

My connecting flight was cancelled and instead of them keeping me in Vegas for the night and flying me out in the morning, they said there were no hotel rooms and flew me to Denver and stuck me overnight there.