Several months ago, I wrote a piece in my newsletter about a reader who had booked a flight from Savannah, GA to Shannon, Ireland (with one stop at ATL). While checking up on her reservation, she noticed that a stop at JFK had been added on top of the stop in Atlanta. This called for overlapping arrivals and departures, lost aisle seats and a variety of other headaches. I got her info to the airlines, and she was eventually able to work things out with scheduling, but the added stop couldn’t be changed. The airline had dropped the Atlanta to Shannon nonstop route on the days she was traveling. This is an unfortunate and annoying occurrence, but it does come up on international flights, and it is within the airline’s right.

I was reminded of the Shannon flight when I read Upgrade: Travel Better today. They highlight a story in which a domestic passenger was lucky enough to land a great deal on a non-stop flight only to be told by the airline later that he would now be making a connection both ways and there was nothing he could do about it. Now, according to the story, there was no route change or flight cancellation. The airline simply saw a chance to sell the nonstop ticket at a higher price, so they booted the traveler and added several hours and a couple of layovers to his journey.

I’ll be honest I find this story a bit hard to believe — or at least I really don’t want to believe it is true.

I really don’t want to believe that an airline is going to start rebooking passengers from their coveted non-stop to a random connecting itinerary for no other apparent reason than they want a do-over — say it ain’t so.

Please let me know if you have ever experienced anything like this. Something about this story just doesn’t add up — but it is nagging me enough to see if anyone else has experienced something akin — Obviously this can (and does) occur the day of departure with delays and cancellations but this particular story describes the situation well before departure…