Questions and Answers

Hello Lucky (and any other helpful OMAATers out there),

My sister and her husband left for their honeymoon on Monday. They made their multi-city booking using United miles for flights on Austrian, South African and Ethiopian airlines. Upon landing in Victoria Falls last night they noticed a popup on the United app that said their flight home was cancelled due to a cancellation of route by Ethiopian Airlines (CPT – ADD – EWR). I told them I would try to help since they’re on their honeymoon and trying to enjoy the trip, but as far as I can tell Ethiopian just changed the dates when they operate the route.

Do you have any idea whether I should start with United (the booking airline) or Ethiopian (the operating airline) to fix this?

Any advice or guidance would be extremely appreciated!

Thanks!

ET should get them on an ET flight, regardless of whether there’s J award space or not so maybe try that first. Might have to 3-way between ET and UA so that they can coordinate and re-issue the ticket. Otherwise, call UA directly and try to get a different route/airline altogether. And they should waive change fees.

Thanks David. I ended up getting them on an ET flight the next day and keeping them in J for CPT-ADD-(DUB)-YYZ, and the agent managed to tack on a UA leg in Y from YYZ-EWR. Not perfect, but at least the inter-Africa and TATL are all biz. Should I leave it at that, or do you think there’s something else to pursue here since they’ll need to pay for another night in CPT, and their return journey is considerably longer?

Thanks!

[QUOTE=”David W, post: 61153, member: 29″]ET should get them on an ET flight, regardless of whether there’s J award space or not so maybe try that first. Might have to 3-way between ET and UA so that they can coordinate and re-issue the ticket. Otherwise, call UA directly and try to get a different route/airline altogether. And they should waive change fees.[/QUOTE]

See if UA will offer anything for the longer routing – but i doubt they will. I wouldnt push too hard.

Check with the credit card they paid the taxes/fees with – they might have trip delay insurance where they could get reimbursed for the extra night.

You can also monitor award space and maybe switch to Lufthansa. If they dont mind JFK, they can also fly SAA and Turkish.