Questions and Answers

Hey all —

I don’t travel that often (a few trips a year) and I came across something that seemed a little unusual, so I wanted to get the community’s take on it.

I’m going to NZ for the first time (yay!) in December and I booked premium economy on Air NZ (from SFO). This week, they emailed me saying they had “schedule change”d my flight, but what they seemingly did is cancel that day’s flight (they operate one a day) and offered to book me on the next day’s flight.

I actually took that because I wasn’t sure what else I could do — I didn’t really wanted to be rebooked on United that day (which is the only other non-stop). I’m assuming there’s a good reason for the cancellation, but I was wondering if people have seen this/whether it’s common and if they have suggestions for what I should do next time. Thanks!

Happens more often than you think! Many of us like when it happens because it puts the ball in your court to essentially rebook your flight at no cost. If flying a day later isn’t an option for you, you have a lot of leverage now to get them to rebook you (at no cost to you) on another airline, connecting through Los Angeles, etc.