Yesterday David was putting dates for our June trip into his calendar and decided to check our reservations. Next thing I hear him calling AA; apparently there was a update message on the page (no e-mail update) that said please call. So we find that our BA leg from London to Rome has been changed, since BA has pulled our late afternoon flight from their schedule, and we will now have a 5 hour layover at Heathrow. That in itself is not the worst thing since we have access to the Business lounge; the problem is that our new flight gets us to Milan at 10:30 pm, and we are thinking that this will be too late to get our car and then drive to our agriturisimo outside Parma that evening.
However, I am not about to actually change the plan yet, because the AA rep said that it is entirely possible that BA will put this flight back on come April when spring/summer bookings increase. They have seen this happen before, but there are no guarantees. Guess we will have a plan A and a plan B for awhile, and I am going to mull over plan B in the next few weeks.
Good eye Sheena, that was my mistake. We are flying to Milan, not Rome (that was our last trip so I think I just typed Rome ). As was explained to us last night, BA has taken those afternoon flights (2pm - 7pm range)to Milan off their schedule; the one closest to our arrival in London is maybe 20 minutes later and we all know that is not going to work. It's due to cost cutting we were told.
Marcia, check the BA website for your dates. I just stuck in June 15th and got LHR to Milan 14:50, 15:05, 18:30 and 19:35. The first and last flights are to Malpensa, the middle two to Linate. I am assuming that you were flying in to Malpensa. It is possible that your AA agent is just entering the one airport which is why they are offering you the late flight rather than the Linate option.
If you are just as happy to fly into Linate, then I would call again and get them to switch you. Their initial reaction may be that they will not make airport changes, but this same thing happened to us last year when our flight from Rome to LGW was cancelled resulting in us being moved to a much later flight. We called and they did change us from the later LGW flight to an earlier flight into LHR. We were on our way to my sister's and Gatwick closer to her home - but we took Heathrow in order to get a better time.
I know a change of flight time is minor compared to many of today's issues - but I like to feel things are sorted once the flights are confirmed, and find it irritating to have them changed.
Edited to add - I see both Kim and Andrew had similar thoughts about changing airports - they are just much less wordy than I am!
Thanks everyone, I am going to check out the Linate possibilty; yes, Sheena, AA certainly did not offer us that option last night. I thought of Linate, but somehow thought we would have to change airports in London, but that is not the case.
Kim, we looked at Pisa, or at least David did, and I think the only flight that worked with our LAX-LHR arrival got us there pretty late, and since it is farther away, we decided that for now, it was a draw.
But the Linate option looks good - I will sic David on AA - transporation is his "job".
Marcia - keep us posted on what you find! We had a similar situation arise last June with the FF tickets I'd gotten for 2 of the 4 family members traveling to Florence from Chicago on a United/Lufthansa code-share via Munich(the other 2 were on paid tickets). I had done my bi-weekly review of the reservations to make sure there were no changes - and discovered they had changed the connecting flight on the FF tickets - but not the two paid ones. When I checked, United told me Lufthansa had removed the original flight from the code-share agreement, so it wasn't available for FF tickets. After some serious conversation with the reservation agent about splitting families, etc., she was able to reinstate the FF seats on the original connection, but I was nervous right up to the day I saw them walk through the doors on arrival.
Judy
Posts: 3899 | Location: Berkeley, CA | Registered: 22 March 2005
Now I have to confess that David is on top of this; the Linate flights for that afternoon do not work because the first one leaves an hour after our connnection arrives and the second is within an hour of the rescheduled flight to Malpensa. So, we are going to dig in the heels and wait to see if there is a surprise April change. Oh, and make a reservation for a Milan airport hotel just in case.
the second is within an hour of the rescheduled flight to Malpensa.
Hi Marcia, just to clarify, are you saying that because it's within an hour you can't change it without a penalty? Linate would be better located for driving to Parma.
No, we just felt that either flight at that time gets us in pretty late, but I will look harder at the Linate option, since we would be closer. Getting in after 9:30pm is feeling pretty late after a long day's travel from CA - the original flight had us arriving at MXP around 7 pm.
I thought I had everything all set up last year in Mexico. Mexicana Airlines was very good with the rest of our flights, but failed to inform us that there was no direct flight from Oaxaca to Chiapas on the date we were flying, even though we were booked on it .
We didn't discover this until we went to the airport for our flight. Fortunately, we were able to get on a later flight that changed planes in Mexico City, and it all worked out.
Charity
Posts: 1741 | Location: Santa Barbara, CA, USA | Registered: 11 May 2003
Google Maps gives Malpensa-Parma driving time as 1 hr. 54, vs. 1:17 from Linate. I would prefer to have a room on arrival rather than drive after an air trip like that, but there's an appeal to having Linate even as a starting point in the morning, including avoiding most Milan-bound rush hour traffic.
Cameron, thanks for the suggestions. Since we using our FF miles, we are not going to try and reroute ourselves from LAX. That plus we can't get to JFK in time for that overnight flight. My last day of school is the 4th, I am done at noon and we have a flight at 7pm on a very nice AA 777,in Business Class, so no desire to mess with that. If BA does not return our original connection at LHR, we are resigned to getting a good night's sleep near Malpensa, and picking up our car the next morning to start the trip. Coming from the west coast always makes for more creative planning.
But we will be checking more regularly from this point,
Slow Travel Talk 
). As was explained to us last night, BA has taken those afternoon flights (2pm - 7pm range)to Milan off their schedule; the one closest to our arrival in London is maybe 20 minutes later and we all know that is not going to work. It's due to cost cutting we were told.
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