So American really needs to upgrade its computer systems when it comes to flight schedule changes. I booked nonstop tickets from BOI to Chicago (ORD) for our December trip to see Hamilton. Today I get an email from American about a schedule change. Instead of nonstop, our flights now each involve a stop, and instead of arriving in Chicago at around 5:45 p.m., the new arrival time is after midnight. Seriously? (The time change was a deal killer anyway, but since ORD is one of the few major cities we can get to non-stop from BOI, there was no way I was going to agree to flights with a stop.) So while on hold for about 35 minutes with AA to speak to an agent to voice my objections to this completely unacceptable change, in addition to checking out alternative carriers on Google flights (because my first thought was that AA had gotten rid of its nonstops between BOI and ORD), I decide to check the AA website. No, there are still nonstop flights on our dates with availability for 4 passengers with departure and arrival times within 1.5 hours of our original times. Really, AA??? Once I finally got an agent, she badmouthed AA's computer and promptly put us back on the nonstops. AA definitely needs to change its algorithm....This is the second time I have gotten notification of a really bad schedule change from them only to find that there is a much better option that the computer neglected to use.
Also, a DP in case this becomes relevant for anyone else. We are/were booked on SW flights to the Bay Area next weekend for the Cal/Oregon game. All four of us were on the same reservation. My daughter (who has NOT learned to love the football -- I'm not really sure whose child this is, lol, except she looks a lot like me) wants to stay in Boise to participate in a river cleanup event with her school club. DH was feeling guilty about making her miss it to attend the FB game since he pressured her into joining the club (any club) in the first place. So he decided he'd stay home with her. It wasn't possible to cancel just DH's and DD's flights online with SW. But it is possible if you call, and the agent even told me how glad she was that I called because she says a lot of people make the mistake of trying to cancel out fewer than all of the passengers online, and since it can't be done online, they end up cancelling their whole reservation for everyone and having to rebook. Not an issue if flight prices are the same (or have gone down). But in this case, the flights for DS and me would have been only $29 cheaper in total than the flights for the 4 of us (which I had already rebooked at least once to take advantage of a fare drop). So the agent was able to cancel out just DH and DD, and they now have a nice pile of travel funds. Of course, we've got some significant travel funds for all of us that need to be used by March 2, 2019, so now we need to figure out where we are going to go to make sure we don't lose out on those funds. Got to spend money to save money, lol...Sounds like Southwest needs to fix their system as well, though, to allow for these partial cancellations to be made online.
