A Long Night at Delta Airlines and the Paris flight that left without us - Priceline.com
For those that read my previous rant on facebook, here's the whole story so hopefully everyone knows how to prevent it from happening to them in the future.
too long; didn't read:
1) make sure your flight seats are always confirmed
2) if they aren't confirmed, call the operating airline and not a partner airline because they don't have the final say
3) taxi vouchers probably mean a long wait and a long drive since it's communal taxi
4) tickets bought indirectly instead of at an airline website may not mean anything
5) upgrading your seat probably gives you priority if it comes down to the last people standing
6) even directly at an airline's website, if you do not get "confirmed" seats, you're on standby!
Lisa and I planned months ago a trip to Paris and booked a flight through priceline.com. Having used it in the past, we thought nothing of it and booked our flight. During the process we were given seat options and once we received our e-mail confirmations, moved on to booking our hotel and other activities.
Looking back, the first mistake was that the e-mail confirmation had our seats marked as "Requested" and not confirmed. I'd never even seen this happen before especially since I was given an option to select seats when I purchased the tickets. It turns out, priceline.com never e-mailed me anything or let me know that my seat request was actually declined and a few days before our trip when we printed our itinerary, we found this out.
Freaked out by not having confirmed seats, I called up Air France who was marked as "Ticketing this flight". Turns out that was my second mistake. When I looked closer, my original e-mail confirmation said Air France but on the latest itinerary, it said operated by Delta (Air France). Asking the Delta manager when we were denied boarding, he explained that we should always try to book our seats with whoever is actually operating the flight since it's their systems that have final say of where everyone sits. During my call to Air France, I was told my seats were confirmed only to find out at JFK that this was not true. The Air France reprenstative thought she had confirmed the seats but they were merely put "on hold" or in other words still unassigned.
Now fast forward to last night. Picking up our luggage after work and going through the usual security process at JFK, we waited for our 8:40pm flight. The departure time slowly changes to 9:30, then 10:30 as a result of "mechanical problems". At around 9pm, an announcement is made that anyone with "unassigned seats" could check in. Second on a pretty long line of people, the Delta person said... Kevin? yeah... hold on... we're working on your seats. Completely puzzled, I stood off to the side with Lisa wondering why everyone else was getting their new boarding passes with seating assignments.
About 15 minutes of standing around, he pulls us over to the side and tells us we might want to sit down because we might not actually get to board the plane. Baffled and really angry, we were appalled at what we were hearing. This is a joke right? We're not getting on a plane that we fully paid for, and even called to confirm our seats? It turns out this happens pretty often and even more so during the Summer. Curious to see how many of "us" were being left behind, we got the great news that we were the lucky winners. The flight had been "oversold" for a while now but they bank on statistics that X number of people will not show up. Turns out... everyone showed up :(
They offered all of the disgruntled passengers $400 compensation, hotel and taxi to give up their seats but this came 2 hours after the flight was supposed to have left already due to the delays. After we watched the gate close, it finally hit us that we were heading home and not to Paris. Another hour at the terminal, we discussed our options and were given our compensation checks. The options were to take a flight tomorrow at 4pm but our seats were not guaranteed. Or we could wait until 11pm which we "should" be able to get on. The options were not worth it because we were only going to Paris for a few days and by the time we would have arrived, we would have lost 1/4 of our trip as well as most of the time we had planned to spend with Lisa's friend in Paris.
The DOT law requires the airline to compensate up to $1300 a person if they cannot find an alternate flight within 4 hours. Additionally it will take 7 days to process the original refund of the airfare but at least we already received the checks for our "inconveniences".
The third mistake of the trip was while trying to see what else we could get compensated, they had discussed taxi vouchers. Figuring they would just pay for our taxi ride, we took them up on it and picked up our luggage that thankfully was pulled before it took a nice trip to France without us and waited for the taxi. Turns out this taxi voucher was for their car service that they use for all their universal airline needs. 10 minutes we were told... at Midnight when we finally finished wrapping up the compensation checks. We saw a yellow taxi at the door and wondered if we could just take that but remembered they had called a special car for us. Big mistake! They were "busy" and the car service eventually got around to us, 45 minutes later!! So it's 12:45am and we get into a van. Letting the driver know where to go, he tells us oh remind me later, I have some other people to pick up. Noooooooo! We had to pick up some other people that got their flights cancelled to bring them to the hotel. Another 25 minutes of driving around the airport going from terminal to terminal trying to track down these stranded passengers, we finally get to leave and head home. 90 minutes it took us for a "free" taxi. Never again, we'll pay the taxi and go home on our own :(
Now that we're home, I do some research and there's probably nothing I can do. I sent a long complaint e-mail to priceline.com and Lisa sent requests to get our hotel and other activities for refunds but we're pretty sure we aren't getting anything back.
Looking through some fine print, I see the following on Priceline.com's FAQs.
Q: What if I am denied boarding at the airport due to overbooking?
A: Airlines sometimes overbook flights. If this happens, priceline travelers have the same rights as other leisure economy class passengers. If you should be denied boarding at the airport due to overbooking, check with your airline gate agent for your flight options.
Apparently it happens often enough to warrant an FAQ and what we found out from the taxi guy was, it pretty much happens every day that he has to drive people that got overbooked to their complimentary hotel. He said the worst was when in a single day, there were 5+ flights that were all overbooked and needed compensation!
More looking around, I found an entire essay written about the analysis of statistics done by the airlines for overbooking their flights and why they still do it where as something like movie tickets do not get oversold even though people might not show up. Pretty shocking to know this happens, just wish it didn't happen to us.
Finally home at almost 2am, we struggled to stay awake and look for alternative getaway trips but give up and call it a night. When we get up and start looking through our trusty jetblue.com, we find some pretty cheap flights out to Puerto Rico. Never having booked a last minute flight before, we are given a notice that your seat will be unassigned and be assigned at the airport. Hrm where have we heard that before? Yea right no thank you. We paid the extra money for get the even more legroom seats and confirmed our seats this time. Not going to take a chance that we get overbooked again.
We're both sad we didn't get to go to Paris and probably don't plan to go anymore in the future.
More research: Statistics of airlines and how many people get overbooked and left behind.
http://airconsumer.dot.gov/SA_Overbooking_Report.cfm
Date: Q1/2012.
Yay for Jet Blue!
too long; didn't read:
1) make sure your flight seats are always confirmed
2) if they aren't confirmed, call the operating airline and not a partner airline because they don't have the final say
3) taxi vouchers probably mean a long wait and a long drive since it's communal taxi
4) tickets bought indirectly instead of at an airline website may not mean anything
5) upgrading your seat probably gives you priority if it comes down to the last people standing
6) even directly at an airline's website, if you do not get "confirmed" seats, you're on standby!
Lisa and I planned months ago a trip to Paris and booked a flight through priceline.com. Having used it in the past, we thought nothing of it and booked our flight. During the process we were given seat options and once we received our e-mail confirmations, moved on to booking our hotel and other activities.
Looking back, the first mistake was that the e-mail confirmation had our seats marked as "Requested" and not confirmed. I'd never even seen this happen before especially since I was given an option to select seats when I purchased the tickets. It turns out, priceline.com never e-mailed me anything or let me know that my seat request was actually declined and a few days before our trip when we printed our itinerary, we found this out.
Freaked out by not having confirmed seats, I called up Air France who was marked as "Ticketing this flight". Turns out that was my second mistake. When I looked closer, my original e-mail confirmation said Air France but on the latest itinerary, it said operated by Delta (Air France). Asking the Delta manager when we were denied boarding, he explained that we should always try to book our seats with whoever is actually operating the flight since it's their systems that have final say of where everyone sits. During my call to Air France, I was told my seats were confirmed only to find out at JFK that this was not true. The Air France reprenstative thought she had confirmed the seats but they were merely put "on hold" or in other words still unassigned.
Now fast forward to last night. Picking up our luggage after work and going through the usual security process at JFK, we waited for our 8:40pm flight. The departure time slowly changes to 9:30, then 10:30 as a result of "mechanical problems". At around 9pm, an announcement is made that anyone with "unassigned seats" could check in. Second on a pretty long line of people, the Delta person said... Kevin? yeah... hold on... we're working on your seats. Completely puzzled, I stood off to the side with Lisa wondering why everyone else was getting their new boarding passes with seating assignments.
About 15 minutes of standing around, he pulls us over to the side and tells us we might want to sit down because we might not actually get to board the plane. Baffled and really angry, we were appalled at what we were hearing. This is a joke right? We're not getting on a plane that we fully paid for, and even called to confirm our seats? It turns out this happens pretty often and even more so during the Summer. Curious to see how many of "us" were being left behind, we got the great news that we were the lucky winners. The flight had been "oversold" for a while now but they bank on statistics that X number of people will not show up. Turns out... everyone showed up :(
They offered all of the disgruntled passengers $400 compensation, hotel and taxi to give up their seats but this came 2 hours after the flight was supposed to have left already due to the delays. After we watched the gate close, it finally hit us that we were heading home and not to Paris. Another hour at the terminal, we discussed our options and were given our compensation checks. The options were to take a flight tomorrow at 4pm but our seats were not guaranteed. Or we could wait until 11pm which we "should" be able to get on. The options were not worth it because we were only going to Paris for a few days and by the time we would have arrived, we would have lost 1/4 of our trip as well as most of the time we had planned to spend with Lisa's friend in Paris.
The DOT law requires the airline to compensate up to $1300 a person if they cannot find an alternate flight within 4 hours. Additionally it will take 7 days to process the original refund of the airfare but at least we already received the checks for our "inconveniences".
The third mistake of the trip was while trying to see what else we could get compensated, they had discussed taxi vouchers. Figuring they would just pay for our taxi ride, we took them up on it and picked up our luggage that thankfully was pulled before it took a nice trip to France without us and waited for the taxi. Turns out this taxi voucher was for their car service that they use for all their universal airline needs. 10 minutes we were told... at Midnight when we finally finished wrapping up the compensation checks. We saw a yellow taxi at the door and wondered if we could just take that but remembered they had called a special car for us. Big mistake! They were "busy" and the car service eventually got around to us, 45 minutes later!! So it's 12:45am and we get into a van. Letting the driver know where to go, he tells us oh remind me later, I have some other people to pick up. Noooooooo! We had to pick up some other people that got their flights cancelled to bring them to the hotel. Another 25 minutes of driving around the airport going from terminal to terminal trying to track down these stranded passengers, we finally get to leave and head home. 90 minutes it took us for a "free" taxi. Never again, we'll pay the taxi and go home on our own :(
Now that we're home, I do some research and there's probably nothing I can do. I sent a long complaint e-mail to priceline.com and Lisa sent requests to get our hotel and other activities for refunds but we're pretty sure we aren't getting anything back.
Looking through some fine print, I see the following on Priceline.com's FAQs.
Q: What if I am denied boarding at the airport due to overbooking?
A: Airlines sometimes overbook flights. If this happens, priceline travelers have the same rights as other leisure economy class passengers. If you should be denied boarding at the airport due to overbooking, check with your airline gate agent for your flight options.
Apparently it happens often enough to warrant an FAQ and what we found out from the taxi guy was, it pretty much happens every day that he has to drive people that got overbooked to their complimentary hotel. He said the worst was when in a single day, there were 5+ flights that were all overbooked and needed compensation!
More looking around, I found an entire essay written about the analysis of statistics done by the airlines for overbooking their flights and why they still do it where as something like movie tickets do not get oversold even though people might not show up. Pretty shocking to know this happens, just wish it didn't happen to us.
Finally home at almost 2am, we struggled to stay awake and look for alternative getaway trips but give up and call it a night. When we get up and start looking through our trusty jetblue.com, we find some pretty cheap flights out to Puerto Rico. Never having booked a last minute flight before, we are given a notice that your seat will be unassigned and be assigned at the airport. Hrm where have we heard that before? Yea right no thank you. We paid the extra money for get the even more legroom seats and confirmed our seats this time. Not going to take a chance that we get overbooked again.
We're both sad we didn't get to go to Paris and probably don't plan to go anymore in the future.
More research: Statistics of airlines and how many people get overbooked and left behind.
http://airconsumer.dot.gov/SA_Overbooking_Report.cfm
Date: Q1/2012.
Yay for Jet Blue!