When I booked my recent flights for a vacation, I was careful to insure I had more than an hour between flights in order to have sufficient time to get from one terminal gate to the next. This morning, I got my final flight confirmation in my in-box. Since we had just worked on it, yesterday, I copied it off and was putting it with my travel papers when I suddenly felt a need to go over it, again.
Wow! I immediately noticed that the previously hour and a half layover before my trans Atlantic flight had been reduced down to 51 minutes. Since the layover airport is HUGE, I worried that we might not make the connecting flight if there were the slightest delays. My husband checked the flights going out from that airport on our travel day, and the flight we had to catch, was the last flight for the day. We miss it, and we wouldn't make our tour connection.
We studied the times more closely to see what happened and without notification, our first flight was being delayed 30 minutes. I have to admit that I was VERY impressed with Continental Airlines. We contacted them on line about possible ways to recitify the situation and they called us immediately. For no further charge they not only got us on an earlier initial flight but found another flight overseas that would leave in line with the new schedule and get us to our final destination two hours early. When thanked the clerk for all his help, I asked if we could go ahead and reserve our seating on-line. There was about two minutes silence and he gave me the seating reservations for both flights. My panic headache is now down to the dull roar or a happy headache!
I knew about confirming flights prior to the departure day and am so glad I stopped and checked the confirmation sent and noticed the change. Just a head's up to everyone about anything scheduled - never take it for granted that the system will stay in line with what you need or thought you had set in cement!
No comments:
Post a Comment