Flight canceled? And surprise, so is your hotel and rental car!

Unfortunately, anyone who’s done much traveling has heard these dreaded words “Your reservation has been canceled.” Often the following words basically are “It’s your travel agent’s fault.”

A friend and client had a trip from San Francisco to Michigan planned that started when I was out of the country last month. After she got back she told me it was a good trip, but that her outbound connection had been messed up because the United Airlines plane in San Francisco had bumped a fuel truck and thus was delayed.

She also said, “Well, there was one other thing, the hotel I had booked at the airport for the last night of the trip told me when I arrived late in the evening, that my reservation had indeed been canceled.”

She also told me that the front desk clerk told her it must have been done by her travel agent.

Since the clerk also told her the reservation was canceled her day of departure, she was able to retort that her travel agent wasn’t even within 5,000 miles of her office, so it was pretty unlikely. In the end, the hotel was full, but they helped her find a room across the street, and for one night, she didn’t mind that much.

I looked up the record in my computer, because I certainly hadn’t done anything to her booking. Indeed, the reservation had been canceled, by United Airlines. The hotel was canceled together with her car reservation for pickup the day she arrived (fortunately, since it was done so late, the company didn’t get the message).

Now, United Airlines, while they may not be a travel agent’s best friend, is not generally in the business of sabotage. In this case, when the United agent had booked a later flight from Chicago to Grand Rapids, they canceled her original connecting flight, along with the car and hotel booking, which were in the same booking. Evidently, not realizing that the flight record included other reservations as well.

Though I would like to say I have never heard of something like this before, it happens. Unless you book all segments of your reservation separately, it is likely that your air, car and hotel segments are all together in one PNR (Passenger Name Record).

This is true for most travel agency records, both “brick and mortar” and online. This situation is also the norm for many reservations booked through an airline or airline site, now that many airlines are asking, “Do you need a car or hotel with that?”

In general, this isn’t a bad idea either — it keeps everything together and easy to track, along with eliminating the problem of having cars and hotels on the wrong dates. But, it does mean a few wrong keystrokes can ruin a whole trip.

When an airline agent cancels a segment or two, it is easy to cancel too many. (Actually, travel agents CAN do the same thing too, but most of the time it is easy to catch before we end the transaction.)

However, should airline agents cancel the whole itinerary by mistake, generally, they will notice the lack of return flights and get those rebooked. But, they might not even notice that hotels or cars are gone.

What can you do to avoid this situation? Generally if you don’t have any flights canceled or changed for any reason, it’s not a problem. But if you do have “one of those days” at the airport, it’s not a bad idea either to check with your agent or check your online booking to make sure everything is intact.

Especially if, as in my client’s case, you have a connecting flight canceled and another later flight rebooked by the airline. Fortunately this sort of thing doesn’t happen that often. But if it happens to you and if it doesn’t turn out to be an easy fix, once is more than enough.

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