6rugrats

Yes.

No one can say. I would imagine you would have less of a chance for an immediate upgrade, because of course, the airline wants to sell those tickets, not give passengers a cheap upgrade.

Yes, really. I am not sure what arriving early has to do with airport electronics? And, you can bring your own food or eat before coming to the airport. I cannot tell you how many people miss their flights because they ignore this advice. If you've checked in online and have no bags to drop off and have precheck, you can probably arrive later. For some reason, so many people wait until they get to the airport to check in and as summer approaches this will take longer and longer. I personally would rather sit at the airport than miss my flight.

I would always choose the earliest flight out. And, I avoid EWR whenever possible. Good choice.

I’m not going to debate semantics. Seems quite silly. But none of that has happened.

But, reading the posts, it appears OP did receive tickets?

It depends on the airline’s rules. if you book a highly restricted ticket, you may not have this option.

Other airlines have been selling these tickets for about five months, so the lowest fares are long gone.

So sorry this happened. None of the story made any sense, so it’s good to know what happened. It’s also a good illustration of how credit card chargebacks don’t always work. I know that I have never been successful with Chase. They are truly terrible.

I can see a couple days where these award seats for this routing are as low as 80,000 miles. Very cheap. This is still strange and I don’t understand what happened.

Agree. Award tickets are not standby. There’s something wrong, or some miscommunication here.

I have never heard of this happening on a ticket booked with FF miles, and I’ve booked plenty using Aadvantage miles. Something is odd here.

I had a pax who had broken his hips and recently had surgery. He came up to the ticket counter asking for a cart to take him to the gate. I found out about the surgery when I asked him why he needed the cart. At my station, these are not available on demand and he was pretty unhappy. I offered wheelchair assistance, but he refused. It was not until about 20 minutes after he left, that I found he'd left his boarding pass on the counter. Can you guess where he was seated? Can you guess why he didn't want to roll up to the gate in a wheel chair?

You are correct; there are no nonstops that I see for this routing at this time period. But OP mentions nonstop from ORD-LHR and reverse, and there are nonstops for this routing. But, I don't really know if they are asking any question, just complaining about the cost and saying RT pricing is cheaper, "like before COVID" but RT to Europe has pretty much always been cheaper (in most cases) than booking two one ways.

IF changes are allowed, which they often are not with very discounted rates, your ticket will be repriced at whatever it cost that day. I would guess significantly more than what you paid.

The airline I work for will not short check bags. You absolutely do not get to choose your bag routing on a kiosk. Your bag will be tagged to its final destination. This is partially to prevent people from hidden city ticketing, which is a violation of your ticket contract. For my airline, your bags are checked through, and they do not come out to the carousel at your connecting city, even if you have an overnight stay. Many of the agents I work with will always submit a fraud report when they suspect a pax of skiplagging.

Agree, buy a separate ticket and use that. Is your age relevant to this problem?

TAP would also allow a free stopover if you were interested.

I would choose #4. That way, you are in Europe. Much easier to then get to your final destination if something goes wrong, as you have so many options. Sometimes, if there’s something such as a weather delay that affects all airlines in the US, you may have to wait days to get from US to Europe. I can’t think of any airport in Europe I’d avoid for a connection.

https://www.wantedinrome.com/news/italy-air-transport-strike-postponed-emilia-romagna-floods.html

Yes, happens all the time as schedules change.

Yes, no need to. Any “discounted fares” are being sold by ticket brokers and these are aggressively audited and canceled by airlines. Fasten your seatbelts for travel this summer, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Last night at work, I dealt with a party of two, who had connected from an international flight at SFO, and then arrived at my airport. Their bags were not here so I did a search and saw they’d failed to p/u bags at SFO, clear customs and drop off at the reflight belt. So, they were still sitting at SFO. I explained why the bags were still there and that at their first point of entry to the US (unless traveling from an airport that had US preclearance) they ALWAYS had to retrieve their bag and recheck. While I filled out a delayed baggage claim, they stood there for a good 10 minutes telling me they were frequent fliers, I was wrong, and this was not how it worked; there was never any need to clear customs and recheck bags, it was automatically done for them. I hear stuff like this every day. Enough said.

I am not even sure what to say to your latest post, OP. There is so much to unwrap and I just don't have the energy. Air travel is complicated, especially when you book using a third party and if you have no real understanding of how it works.

Not true. The FAs look at the overhead bins and no matter what's up there, if they are full they contact the gate agents and tell them to start checking bags.