Darn Flight Changes Throw a Monkey Wrench Into Everything

Well, like I always say I hate air travel and airlines.  And yesterday only reinforced my theory.

After work I went in looking at the option for reserving our seats on our Air Transat Flight to Rome.

As I scanned the seat map, comparing seats with flight guru seat recommendations I noticed something was off.  

At the bottom of the page it showed the flight with one stop in London.  Hmmm our flight is suppose to be direct to Rome from Vancouver.  After further investigation and checking travel search sites I see our flight to Rome has changed.  It now leaves earlier from Vancouver and arrives in Rome an hour later.  This makes our 2.5 hour layover in Rome with enough time to get to our 1420 flight just enough, but now it is down to a 1 and a half hour layover and that is NOT enough time to clear customs, get bags and get to new flight.

So I get on the phone with the agency we booked our flights with - Kiwi - and they are not aware of the change and will look into it.

After hanging up with them I see the next flight to Genoa means an added 6 hour layover in Rome - 8 hours in total. That will not work.  We would never have booked that flight if it was like that originally.  

Oddly Air Transat's site shows direct flight to Rome every Friday - but not that day!  It flies to London then Rome. Just our luck.

This morning we get an email from Kiwi (our agency) with the offer to change to the late flight to Genoa (8 hour layover) at no cost.  

I call them up and say that we can't do that option and they say they can cancel the entire thing at no cost due to the drastic change.  I know it is not their fault and accept that offer.  

One thing I highly recommend to everyone - and it has saved our butts.  Is check your flights regularly for changes because often your travel agent doesn't even know about it until you alert them.

Now I have to start again looking at options for flights to Genoa.  So stay tune.