Warning to those with Delta flights to and from San Juan in the next few months

Thank you CruiseCritic!!! I was just on my roll call for the Dawn sailing out of San Juan on DECEMBER 28th (3 months almost from now). Another cruiser said that he just randomly checked his flights for the end of December and for his return flight in early June with Delta, and BOTH flights had been cancelled and he was not notified by Delta. I checked my reservation with Delta and all appeared on the computer as fine, but when I tried to make a dummy booking on the Delta website, my flights were not there.

I called Delta and was told that my flights were cancelled two days ago and I was sent an email about it. Ahhh...no..I did not get an email and neither did the other person on our roll call. I think someone screwed up royally at Delta and did not contact anyone. We got the email two weeks ago saying we COULD change flights if we wanted to with no penalty, but we did not want to change. Anyways, the dozen or so Delta flights with connections down to San Juan from Toronto (our route, but the other cruiser had the same issue with flights for him too from another city) was consolidated into three choices and two of the three were already sold out. I was told the only available choice left will be full by tomorrow as well. What about those who do not know that their flight has been cancelled yet and find out to late.

Warning to all people flying to San Juan, even if your flights are months from now, keep a close eye on this.

Sounds like a real shambles, good luck for anyone affected by this. At least you have plenty of time to get round the problems.

This seems to be par for the course with Delta. Our flights have changed twice for our late November flight to and from New Orleans and both times I only found out by logging onto the Delta website and looking at my reservation. No email, phone or text warnings. Good thing I caught the first one because my wife and I snagged the last two seats together.

Thanks for the warning about Delta, we don't fly too often within North America but we will steer clear of Delta.

This seems to be par for the course with Delta. Our flights have changed twice for our late November flight to and from New Orleans and both times I only found out by logging onto the Delta website and looking at my reservation. No email, phone or text warnings. Good thing I caught the first one because my wife and I snagged the last two seats together.

Delta has always been good for us in the past. This is the first time that we have had issues with them. Puts a real bitter taste in your mouth though when considering who we want to book with in the future.

Yes, please stay away from Delta so there will be more seat availability for ME. Thank you.

Interesting...we've had our flights changed three times by Delta in the last month and we have received email notices for all three changes. I would be super upset if they cancelled my flight and I wasn't aware either!. We are going from Minneapolis to Ft. Lauderdale in March for our cruise so not San Juan. The last change I was not happy about because they switched me from a previously booked nonstop flight to making a connection in Atlanta the night before the cruise...no thank you. I called Delta immediately after receiving an email notice and although I had to wait one hour to speak to someone (thank god for speakerphone so I could do other things while waiting :(), they were very accommodating in switching my flight to a nonstop to Miami at the time I needed. I wonder why Delta is making so many flight changes in all these cities??

I wonder why Delta is making so many flight changes in all these cities??

They've been doing this for several years now. I fly with delta often and yes, if you book more than a couple weeks ahead you WILL have flight changes. Get emails from them constantly about flight changes and it's been as little as a 2 minute adjustment. No idea why. I'd be upset about a non-stop being changed to a layover though!!!

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Oh geez... we are also booked on Delta for Toronto to San Juan at the end of November. We had a schedule change notification about a week ago via email... just checked the website and my flights are still showing as confirmed.

Oh geez... we are also booked on Delta for Toronto to San Juan at the end of November. We had a schedule change notification about a week ago via email... just checked the website and my flights are still showing as confirmed.

I get those emails many times. Delta makes minor changes to their schedule every 2 - 3 months. If your itinerary changes by even a few minutes, you will get a notification. I currently have 5 flights booked with them and got 4 notifications in the past week. I fly with them over 150,000 miles per year.

Every time there has been a major schedule change (i.e. cancelling a flight), they have rebooked me on another one. Every time but once, the new booking was fine. I can only advise anyone concerned with these changes to log in and look at your flights whenever you get a notification.

Delta codeshare Air France cancelled my flight to Paris 4 hours prior to departure. I made a call to the number on the email and promptly got on a flight 20 minutes later that same day.

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Thank you CruiseCritic!!! I was just on my roll call for the Dawn sailing out of San Juan on DECEMBER 28th (3 months almost from now). Another cruiser said that he just randomly checked his flights for the end of December and for his return flight in early June with Delta, and BOTH flights had been cancelled and he was not notified by Delta. I checked my reservation with Delta and all appeared on the computer as fine, but when I tried to make a dummy booking on the Delta website, my flights were not there.

 

I called Delta and was told that my flights were cancelled two days ago and I was sent an email about it. Ahhh...no..I did not get an email and neither did the other person on our roll call. I think someone screwed up royally at Delta and did not contact anyone. We got the email two weeks ago saying we COULD change flights if we wanted to with no penalty, but we did not want to change. Anyways, the dozen or so Delta flights with connections down to San Juan from Toronto (our route, but the other cruiser had the same issue with flights for him too from another city) was consolidated into three choices and two of the three were already sold out. I was told the only available choice left will be full by tomorrow as well. What about those who do not know that their flight has been cancelled yet and find out to late.

 

Warning to all people flying to San Juan, even if your flights are months from now, keep a close eye on this.

Delta just reduced the NY to San Juan flights from 3 to 2 in November and 4 to 2 from December on. This is due to the demand practically falling to almost nothing.

For example on the 28th from NY to San Juan even with the flights being reduced from 4 to 2 both of the flights still operating have only a few dozen people booked on them total. If the flights were full they wouldn't be cancelled.

I think the OP issue is specific to flights in and out of San Juan, however.

Also, as OP stated, they logged in online and although everything looked fine there, were told on the phone that their flight was canceled. My San Juan flights are also confirmed when I log in online, but I’m going to call Delta just in case.

Thanks for the update, Orlando. Makes sense. I guess I’ll have to keep calling Delta to check on the NY to San Juan flights.

Just so you know Jet Blue has been doing the same thing. Lots of people on our cruise have found their flights missing and called. No email has been sent and the only available flights seem to be late at night

I think the OP issue is specific to flights in and out of San Juan, however.

 

Also, as OP stated, they logged in online and although everything looked fine there, were told on the phone that their flight was canceled. My San Juan flights are also confirmed when I log in online, but I’m going to call Delta just in case.

OP here...someone had told me that flights were changed because they cannot land in San Juan after dark. That cannot be true because I just looked for tonight and Delta has a plane landing at 9:41 pm from Atlanta in San Juan - shoots down the theory that night flights are not occurring to land in San Juan.

Online did not show a cancellation. No email received (although in the past I received emails from Delta telling my flight time had changed by 2 minutes). Simply someone messed up here regarding flight changes into San Juan and informing there customers. I am surprised that people are saying JetBlue did the same. Disappointing since they are usually our favourite airline.

https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=88805

FAA news release on San Juan.

Thank you CruiseCritic!!! I was just on my roll call for the Dawn sailing out of San Juan on DECEMBER 28th (3 months almost from now). Another cruiser said that he just randomly checked his flights for the end of December and for his return flight in early June with Delta, and BOTH flights had been cancelled and he was not notified by Delta. I checked my reservation with Delta and all appeared on the computer as fine, but when I tried to make a dummy booking on the Delta website, my flights were not there.

 

I called Delta and was told that my flights were cancelled two days ago and I was sent an email about it. Ahhh...no..I did not get an email and neither did the other person on our roll call. I think someone screwed up royally at Delta and did not contact anyone. We got the email two weeks ago saying we COULD change flights if we wanted to with no penalty, but we did not want to change. Anyways, the dozen or so Delta flights with connections down to San Juan from Toronto (our route, but the other cruiser had the same issue with flights for him too from another city) was consolidated into three choices and two of the three were already sold out. I was told the only available choice left will be full by tomorrow as well. What about those who do not know that their flight has been cancelled yet and find out to late.

 

Warning to all people flying to San Juan, even if your flights are months from now, keep a close eye on this.

Thanks to your post, which I came across this afternoon, we are now confirmed on our flights to San Juan in January. After checking on line, I noticed our assigned seats were not even on the chart. After a very long phone call, we were told of a new flight #, and no seat assignments. Another long wait, and now our seat assignments are way in the back of the plane. They never sent an email. On top of that, there were very few seats left. Thank you for bringing this to our attention! Check on your flights, everyone!

Thanks to your post, which I came across this afternoon, we are now confirmed on our flights to San Juan in January. After checking on line, I noticed our assigned seats were not even on the chart. After a very long phone call, we were told of a new flight #, and no seat assignments. Another long wait, and now our seat assignments are way in the back of the plane. They never sent an email. On top of that, there were very few seats left. Thank you for bringing this to our attention! Check on your flights, everyone!

Instead of waiting on the phone why didn't you just log in online? The same seats available over the phone are also available online.

If you think Delta is bad don't fly United or American. We fly Delta often and are constantly getting e-mails about changes as minor as one minute. In addition it never hurts to check online, especially after something like the natural disasters that hit the Eastern Caribbean.

Instead of waiting on the phone why didn't you just log in online? The same seats available over the phone are also available online.

No, in this case the web site did not show our original flight. We were online for quite awhile. It showed a new flight number, and seat assignments of 2 seats that didn't even exist on the seat diagram. The Delta agent couldn't even figure out what was going on, and had to get a supervisor.

Sharing this so others will check on their flights, and not be disappointed.

Instead of waiting on the phone why didn't you just log in online? The same seats available over the phone are also available online.

Last evening I managed to get a Delta flight to replace my original flight. That said, the one we got is for the next day, so I may be out our pre-paid Airbnb for the night we no longer need now that we fly the following day. I was told I only had ONE option for the following day as well, even though it had a long layover in a city I did not feel comfortable with in the middle of winter (wanting to avoid a possible Nor'Easter). There was a second option, still at a crummy time, but with an hour less layover and a much better layover airport in my opinion. I was told that I could not have that flight because all the economy seats were spoken for, so trying to change to this flight online would not have been an option.

Today I called back and talked to Delta Corporate, who immediately changed me and put me on the flight I preferred. That said, all the economy seats are still showing as sold, but they added the 6 of us on it anyways with a status reading confirmed on our reservation. I tried to pre-book our seats for that first leg of the flight and it is reading that there are no available seats to select at all. I think that Delta is having some issues handling the consolidation of all of these flights to and from San Juan and are experiencing many problems. Best way to try to handle them is calling them directly, trying not to lose your temper with them while you are on the phone with them, and pleading how their choice to cancel flights has had negative effect on your plans.

Glad I was able to share this info with others out there as it seems many of us are affected. Thanks to the poster on my Roll Call who made me aware of it too.

I often remark to my wife about how great Delta's customer service line is, then note that it's too bad we have to call them so often.

They've been doing this for several years now. I fly with delta often and yes, if you book more than a couple weeks ahead you WILL have flight changes. Get emails from them constantly about flight changes and it's been as little as a 2 minute adjustment. No idea why. I'd be upset about a non-stop being changed to a layover though!!!

 

 

 

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Last evening I managed to get a Delta flight to replace my original flight. That said, the one we got is for the next day, so I may be out our pre-paid Airbnb for the night we no longer need now that we fly the following day. I was told I only had ONE option for the following day as well, even though it had a long layover in a city I did not feel comfortable with in the middle of winter (wanting to avoid a possible Nor'Easter). There was a second option, still at a crummy time, but with an hour less layover and a much better layover airport in my opinion. I was told that I could not have that flight because all the economy seats were spoken for, so trying to change to this flight online would not have been an option.

Today I called back and talked to Delta Corporate, who immediately changed me and put me on the flight I preferred. That said, all the economy seats are still showing as sold, but they added the 6 of us on it anyways with a status reading confirmed on our reservation. I tried to pre-book our seats for that first leg of the flight and it is reading that there are no available seats to select at all. I think that Delta is having some issues handling the consolidation of all of these flights to and from San Juan and are experiencing many problems. Best way to try to handle them is calling them directly, trying not to lose your temper with them while you are on the phone with them, and pleading how their choice to cancel flights has had negative effect on your plans.

Glad I was able to share this info with others out there as it seems many of us are affected. Thanks to the poster on my Roll Call who made me aware of it too.

What is happening here is the bulkhead seats just behind First/Business class are held for the gate agent

to assign to handicap psgrs - families - unaccompanied minors and a host of other circumstances.

Emergency Exit rows are also held back for eligible able body persons.

While it may be looking like an oversale in the making it is a carefully orchestrated manipulation of seating

placing each person in the seat category that they have paid for and doing minimal upgrading to fill the

remaining seats.

Other problems as aircraft equipment substitution subbing a smaller for a larger aircraft and or different seating

configurations all contribute to this mess.

Add pilot and flight attendant crew scheduling to fly specific types of aircraft to muddy the mess further.

Some seating on a few flights maybe reserved for government and civil aid folks having a priority need to

help the public - when their services are not needed or better served in another mode those seats become

available.

There is a great deal more here than meets the eye of the CC reader.

It is going to take a bit of time to smooth out the aftermath of the hurricanes damages to restore the

infrastructure of air service to communities hard hit and co-ordinate this with the Cruise industry to provide

alternate cruises to keep people employed and offer any cruise alternatives at all.

It will get better - patience - make the best plans you can around the troubled areas !