Julie

We just flew round-trip in USA. All flights were relatively full; this had me quite surprised. I found out from speaking to other passangers that several of them had been rescheduled onto the same plane as me. <BR> <BR>When I got home, I had an email from orbitz saying that my next flight out had a schedule change. This change made the connection impossible to meet and no other flights were available within 4 hours to meet the connection so I canceled. The service rep at Orbitz said many flights were being consolidated and cancelled. <BR> <BR>So, now I am very concerned about scheduling a flight out of USA for a winter trip to Europe. Have many of you who have flow out of USA to Europe had problems with the schedule changes in flights? Is there a "better way" to book my Europe flight? For instance, should I plan to have a one-day stay in my connection city, or something? <BR> <BR>Any good advice? <BR> <BR>Our flight that was just changed had no good alternative flights avaliable, so we are just driving 11 hours instead of spending 10 hours and $500 on the airline tickets. If the Europe flight is messed up, we can't just hope in a car and drive there!

Julie

Forgot to mention: There are no direct flights to Europe from my hometown or nearby towns. We will have to make a connection in Chicago, NYC,etc. <BR> <BR>I have been out of town and just read through some posts. It seems like other people are having this sort of problem. <BR> <BR>Any good advice is more than welcome. I am strongly considering buying travel insurance for the first time for my trip. I am also strongly considering buying a complete air/hotel/tour package because of the posts that I read where people are having there flights cancelled with a refund but the lodging in Europe won't give a refund.

chris

Most flights out of New York depart <BR>between 5:00 PM and 11:00 pm. Most airlines(Delta, Air France, American) <BR>have multiple flights and are usually <BR>partners with each other. <BR>I would chdeck all of the flights available on ORBITZ and assume that any Airline with at least two flights would only cancel one. <BR> <BR>You should make sure that you arrive in NY hours before you need to. I would thus book the 6:00 pm flight before I booked the 10:00 flight. Better safe than sorry. <BR> <BR>PS I would def. buy trip insurance at this time. Good Luck.

info

Yes, we had a change to our November flight to Milan. Alitalia is no longer flying out of SFO so they put us on the LAX flight. The are picking up the tab for our flights to/from LAX. The agent at the desk told me that Alitalia would have no staff at SFO as of October 30.

Carol

My flights have only had minor changes. I too cannot fly direct, but I do fly into a hub airport on an airline that has several flights to the hub. <BR> <BR>Also, my hotel reservation in Europe can be cancelled at fairly late notice. I think that most of the major airlines have made the majority of changes for the next few months. United was one of the last to make major schedule changes and they are doing theirs now so hopefully it will slow down!

amy

I just tried to get tickets for my son to come home from college(out of the country) and the Orbitz site listed only a few flights. When I called that airline,they offered more flights but there was an additional 20 dollar difference.I would rather pay the extra $20.00 and go at better times and more enjoyable equipment to fly.Orbitz is great but can be limiting at times?