Does the "new" US Airways have a clue?
 

Back in October we booked two flights from Philadelphia to Seattle -- August 30 to Sept 9 including a $99 companion fare. Today I got an email. It seems our 7:35 AM flight arriving in Seattle at 10:19 has changed. It is now 5:59 to 9:06 PM. Since we were flying into Seattle and then driving to Vancouver this won't work. I called and spoke to a guy who could find no other alternatives. There are no other non stops, and the ones with a change take way too long to still arrive in Vancouver in the mid afternoon. I was looking online at a connecting flight, but he couldn't find it, finally saying "well, that flight doesn't really exist". He just kept wanting to return our money. But tell me where else we're going to get two flights for under $500 which is what we paid back in October for this rountrip!

I gave up for the time being, then called back. The next agent told me there is a nonstop flight that departs at 7:30 AM arriving at 10:20 AM. Note -- this is just 5 minutes earlier than our original flight and arrives just one minute later. Fine! Perfect! But it does not appear on the website anywhere. So we are now rebooked on this "imaginary?" flight. I'll wait a couple days. Do you think there is such a flight (the seating chart from the confirmation email she sent me shows nearly all seats available. She could not tell me why the other agent couldn't find that flight, nor why it doesn't appear on the US Airways website.

Hmm I think I would be worried too NeoPatrick, hope it is a real flight, maybe the first agent was just clueless!!!

For companion fares I always book with an agent. Just call back and check.

Gretchen, do you mean a t
Ravel agent rather than direct with the airline? Why would a travel agent know more about the schedule than the airline -- particularly if the flught is not listed on the airlines schedule?

Any chance this mess is related to new relationship with United and it's a codeshare-sort-of-thing?

It's late after a challenging day, but I hope you get what I'm saying. Perhaps some flights aren't showing up on both websites yet, esp. if some other international carrier is somehow involved.

Anyway, the only true thing about dealing with airline reservations is that it all takes persistence and re-checking about 5 times more than you think it should.

It's flight 668, you don't see it on the website? Maybe it just disappeared momentarily as they tried to switch all the passengers over from the cancelled flight.

We were once scheduled to fly American into Stansted and they cancelled the entire route.

Flight 668 is on the Us Airways website.

Mark

There are several N/S flights from PHL: 668, plus three others. If you had flown through Charlotte you'd arrive even earlier but N/S are obviously preferred.

They are merged with American....not united.

The flight is likely a future flight that hasn't started service yet.

No, of course not a travel agent. Calling the airline "agent". But anyway, it could be because of the American merger and combining routes. I wonder if they still codeshare with United since the merger.

Gretchen, I doubt it since they have also left the Star Alliance and are now in OneWorld.

OK, another day and everything has changed. Last night the agent who couldn't seem to find flights that I was looking at on the website, finally did say "well, they might be working on the schedules now so there still might be some changes. At that time he insisted there was only ONE nonstop flight per day from PHL to SEA, and the website only showed one as well! I thought he just didn't want to talk with me anymore as he was more interested in giving us back our money than in finding a suitable alternative schedule. But this morning they now show four nonstops from PHL to SEA -- including the one that we are now scheduled on.

So perhaps the answer to all this is yes, they WERE working on the schedules and the website was completely wrong, as was the first agent.

In any case now when I bring up our confirmation code, the right flight at the right time DOES show, and I was able to select seats.

OK, Gretchen, I was confused as I didn't even think it was possible to book a companion fare flight without doing it with an agent, which is what I originally did. And I thought I was clear that I was speaking to an agent last night.

And incidentally I did go last night to AA's website and it showed the same flights for US Airways that the US Airways site showed. But today, theirs is updated as well to show the various other flights.

I guess now my biggest question is when they changed the time of our confirmed flight by 5 minutes, why on earth did they send us emails that said our flight had changed by over 10 hours? Or rather, why would they change our flight so dramatically before they finished setting the new schedule including a new flight that was just five minutes different from our original one? Or why would they be changing the schedules and removing three fourths of the flights without letting their own booking agents know that? Why would a booking agent be so definite that there were NO other alternatives? But for what it's worth, I'm guessing they did that to everyone on our flight, as when the second agent last night put us on the "right" flight, we booked the first two seats on that entire flight. Already this morning I see about a fourth of the seats are gone, so I suspect others are finding the same thing, and now "moving back" to the correct flight.

In any case now when I bring up our confirmation code, the right flight at the right time DOES show, and I was able to select seats.


Good...be happy!

Thanks for correction. Of course it was AA not United (which now has Continental tails). I needed sleep.

"Flight 668 is on the Us Airways website.
Mark"

Wow. Thanks for not reading my post, but commenting anyway. You are right that it is on the website -- NOW -- but when they sent us the emails yesterday, and when I was talking to the agents last night, it was NOT on the website, nor were two other nonstops that are there now. Nor was the agent able to find such a flight or either of the other two.

Your initial post is dated June 6 at 9:02PM.

clarkgriswold posted on June 6 at 11:45PM about the same flight I posted on June 7 at 1:41AM

You were probably too hysterical to notice.

Mark