Mood:
irritatedLast Friday, 5 March, my wife and I left for the airport. I was to fly to the ASAC meeting in Tokyo on a long-existing set of tickets, she was to go home after a difficult rescheduling of her Delta flight scheduled 27 Feb evening.
LAN bumped me from the first leg of the flight and there were no options to connect. Part of the story is told in an earlier blog entry--after several LAN reps had said they would reschedule me or bus me back to Santiago and disappeared, I just took a taxi back to the apartment, where I phoned LAN. They offered a flight the next morning but a call to UAL revealed that there was no connection which could get me to Tokyo. The LAN agent then asked me to phone back later, after the confusion died down, for compensation.
So I phoned LAN today. I was told that I could rebook my ticket by 31 March. If I flew by then there would be no change fee. If I flew before 30 Nov I would pay the fare difference. But if I did not schedule a flight by 31 March I would lose the money I had paid.
I think this is an absolute disgrace. I don't know my schedule so far in advance, and I've already booked my turno flight to Calama for 8 days later in this month so it isn't likely I'll be squeezing in a weekend trip to BA. I'm sure the airline lost a lot of money during the whole quake episode but I don't like the insult of being denied a seat after 7 hours at the airport followed by their proposal to just keep my money as compensation.
