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Urgent problem, return ticket, no outbound flight
25 replies
2.6K views
387 posts
Hi all,
I am in the States currently due to a wedding, travelling tomorrow back to London. My daughter could not make the outbound flight due to suspicion of swine flu, but she made it with my mother at a later date with a differente airline.
Now she was due back to fly with me tomorrow on AA but to my surprise the ticket was cancelled. I informed the AA desk in London twice, by phone and on the day of my travel, that she would not make the outbound but would make the inbound.
AA in the States have no record of my communication and now want to charge me a one way ticket for her. The problem here is that the flight is full and the only tickets available are business or the most expensive economy.
What are my options here? I gave them plenty of notice and nobody in London told me that a ticket would have to be re-issued. She starts school on Monday so needs to get back with me asap....
Thanks guys.
I am in the States currently due to a wedding, travelling tomorrow back to London. My daughter could not make the outbound flight due to suspicion of swine flu, but she made it with my mother at a later date with a differente airline.
Now she was due back to fly with me tomorrow on AA but to my surprise the ticket was cancelled. I informed the AA desk in London twice, by phone and on the day of my travel, that she would not make the outbound but would make the inbound.
AA in the States have no record of my communication and now want to charge me a one way ticket for her. The problem here is that the flight is full and the only tickets available are business or the most expensive economy.
What are my options here? I gave them plenty of notice and nobody in London told me that a ticket would have to be re-issued. She starts school on Monday so needs to get back with me asap....
Thanks guys.
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Replies
Might be worth contacting London again and see if they have any notes, they should have advised you the return would be cancelled if she did not show for the first flight.
Do you have a note of the time and date that these calls were made and to whom you spoke? I am just wondering if you have no option but to buy a further ticket, if you would be able to prove that you had been advised incorrectly previously if the phone calls were recorded.
As hard it is to believe I did it (contact them) out of gut feeling. I did not know this policy but I informed them anyway. I told AA in the US to call London and investigate but their customer services just say that they have no record. I would never expose my daughter with 24 hours to go... Call me an idiot for not taking down names, I accept that, but I called them. Like I said, I logged in online thinking that it was ok, to my surprise her name was off the list.
Can I claim on my travel insurance?
I think your best bet to minimise your outgoings for now may be to try and throw yourself at the mercy of AA in the States and see if they would allow you to transfer to another flight at a later time/date on which there may be a cheaper economy seat still available for your daughter.
I'm guessing that travel insurance itself may not cover it but that you would be looking at taking AA to court if possible, providing your conversations with them have been recorded - but that is only a guess (and probably a bad one) on my part.
I hope you can get this resolved to your satisfaction some way or other.
Thanks for your input, I will look into the medical proof once I get to London. She was seen by her GP, it wasn't swine flu in the end. It's just so frustrating that I will have to take a big hit (1500 USD) and with no guarantees of travel insurance covering it, when I could have paid for a re-issued ticket at a much cheaper price when I first called. I am not disputing paying, it's only not fair to pay so much due to bad customer service. 1500 USD hits me badly, a big portion of my savings gone...