One of my enormous frustrations is the need to ‘Feed and Water’ reservations, as Pizzainmotion described it this week.
He refers to the need to periodically check your bookings, especially if they are a few months away, as airlines seem really bad telling us that they have changed times, caused mis-connects, or cancelled destinations all together.
Recently Royal Jordanian were superb when they stopped flying to Colombo, Sri Lanka. They contacted me, told me my options, rebooked me (even taking over an American Airlines ticket to do it) and then sent me email confirmations. I dealt with one person through the whole process who could not have been nicer about it.
Contrast – American Airlines, and airline I’m beginning to hate. After my awful Security Experience in Paris, and my previous downgrade on AA following a schedule change, I checked my booking with some trepidation.
True to form AA has made some changes to my autumn flights which mean I can no longer make connections in Miami to Punta Cana. It seems there evening flight is gone. AA has told me nothing about this of course, I just had to find out for myself by happening to check my reservation.
Outbound, AA has me misconnecting in MIA:
No rebooking by AA.
And the Inbound, they have me misconnecting also:
I am about to cAAll AA to see what they offer. I suspect I’ll try and overnight in MIA both ways and miss the overnight in PUJ, a shame as I have never been there before.
I would suggest you check any flights you have in the Autumn as I suspect this is just the start of schedule changes as AA and US try to merge their operations. In particular it appears that AA have changed A LOT of flights to and from the Caribbean.
Good Luck!
My experience is very similar. My early morning SFOLAX flight on AA was cancelled, and that of course made my onward connection to Asia no longer feasible. What did AA do without bothering to inform me? Got rid of my nice transpacific flight and instead re-booked me on a crappy AA flight from DFW (making me fly SFODFW to head to Asia). When I called to inquire, I was graciously offered a free refund if I did not like the new flights. Thank you very much – AA is becoming Absolutely Awful.
AA’s presence in the Caribbean continues to wain. What was once a strength is certainly no longer. If this is an award booking, you might be able to try to get to Punta Cana using Seabourne out of SJU but that’s at least two more hops.
Schrott…I had exactly the same MIA-PUJ problem. Though to someone’s credit at AA, I actually received a call. Eventually after 2 calls and 2 hours on the phone, they’ve re-routed me to SDQ which allows me (for the moment) to complete my LHR-MIA-Dom.Rep trip in one day…which is what I had originally planned to do!!!
Shame that you can’t take advantage of your PUJ destination as it’s a great beach venue…even though it’ll be during the hurricane season. If you do make it, check the weather websites. Have you considered (MIA-SDQ) flying to Santo Domingo which has a lot more to do and see than PUJ (which has the best beaches!!)?
Apologies for the reference to ‘Schrott’, I meant to attribute directly to Miles from Blighty!!