The only travel experience I have that resembles that at all was on the same awful airline. Besides the things you’ve listed, I also had to sit in their bulkhead rows, which had less than the usual amount of leg room, and my legs fell asleep over and over!!!

I had the same problem last week when I was flying to San Diego on Delta to defend my dissertation. Because of delays and getting stuck in San Francisco, I ended up flying to LA instead. On the return flight, they say “uh, you aren’t booked for the flight”. I showed them my email confirmation and say “uh, yes I am” and they told me the same thing you heard. WTF???

I just like how it’s our responsibility to check to make sure they haven’t arbitrarily decided to drop our reservations, instead of say, getting a phone call or god forbid an EMAIL before making a change.

For three years, I travelled the US for my job, being in a different town every one or two weeks. Sometimes going from one coast to the other and then back again. Yes, my sleeping schedule was bizarro.

I found that it is common practice across all airlines and their respective affiliates I flew that if you miss a scheduled flight or connection your return seat reservations will be canceled. I would usually fly American but sometimes Northwest, Delta or United and all of these are guilty of this fallacy.

I’m not sure on their reasoning for doing this, perhaps if you miss one flight you are going to miss the return so no need to keep your booking for the flight.

I doubt it will ever change. Competition fosters better service and there is no real competition for travelling here in the US.

The irony is that I flew standby on America West, so on some level, they should have known that I did make it to Austin. “Should” being the operative word. I got the feeling that when I was rushed on my standby flight (along with half of a dozen other souls) that that fact never made it into a computer.

Oh so sorry that America’s Worst Airline upheld its bad, bad rep. We will only fly Southwest, unless it is completely impossible. They have yet to let us down. Their best practice is that should you cancel a flight, they just put that money into an account, which you can access the next time you travel: no penalties. I don’t know about the standby thing effecting the return trip, but since they operate in a realm of two one-ways, they might not do that.

PS Your story is terrible, but imagine flying fuck ups when you and your spouse are sick and you are with your young child, who gave you the cold. There is no hell like the descending airplane. There is no hell like your child, who is tired of flying all day, screaming and you just wanting to take some nyquil and have the flight attendant deal with her.

I am here at the Phoenix airport waiting for an America West flight that is 2 1/2 hours delayed (as of now) because the FRIGGIN pilot didn’t show up. They are supposedly waiting for a pilot coming in from another flight. I am sure he will be wide awake to fly our plane. It is due to land at 2 am. As this may be my last time that I write….

They aren’t even offering to buy us a meal or a drink!!! Heathens.

I just received an email from Continental Airlines notifying me they are changing my flight plans by delaying my departure on all flights I reserved nearly a year ago by an hour and taking away all meals. I am traveling 9h on one flight,NJ to Barcelona and 6h on another flightBarcelona to NJ (not sure why it is 3h less time) and no snack, no lunch no dinner no breakfast! Nothing on my 4h flight either from DEN to NJ each way. I had snacks, lunch and dinners prior to their notification. 9 h no snack!! I wonder if they have water! Oh yeah, they are also changing our seat assingnments!!

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention why we are going to Barcelona. We got bumped last year flying to Scotland. In NJ they said we had no seats although we had reservations. We ended up going to Paris with an 8h layover and received these comp tickets. perhaps that’s why we are being treated like stow aways.