Flying Delta in April

[Deloresgardella]

I have a couple question that maybe someone can answer for me. I will be flying from SFO to FLL in April, on Delta, the day before our cruise. :) We transfer planes in Atlanta and only have about an hour between flights. Will that be enough time for our luggage to also get transfered and be there when we get to FLL or will we have to pick it up later. If so will they notify us when it comes in.:confused: Also I booked tickets for a grandson, daughter and her boyfriend. They are unable to go but the tickets are non-refundable and I haven't cancelled the seats yet. I thought about keeping would give my other grandson and me more room. Is this unethical. :o Thanks you

 

Delores

[cathryn58]

They are not refundable but you can use the credit of the price of the tickets for flight up to a year after the flight was reserved. There may be a small fee to reissue the tickets. It is silly to keep the reservation because the airlines oversell many flights, and it may not give you any more room. Use the flight's credit to go visit the grandkids -- or to go on another cruise.

[Globaliser]

We transfer planes in Atlanta and only have about an hour between flights. Will that be enough time for our luggage to also get transfered and be there when we get to FLL or will we have to pick it up later.

The idea is that your bags should be transferred and on the same onward flight as yours. So expect them to be at FLL when you get there. And they very probably will be. But if they don't turn up, then you will need to get some attention from Delta's baggage services before you leave the airport.

Also I booked tickets for a grandson, daughter and her boyfriend. They are unable to go but the tickets are non-refundable and I haven't cancelled the seats yet. I thought about keeping would give my other grandson and me more room. Is this unethical.

First you have to ask yourself what credit (if any) you'd get from these tickets if you were to cancel the reservations and rebook at some future date. If the credit is of any significant value, you might take cathryn58's advice and cancel. But you'll need to check what credit you get, what the change fee is, and what rebooking requirements or restrictions there might be.

 

If you decide that there's no point in cancelling and taking the credit, then there are two more stages in deciding what you should do. I'm assuming that you already have allocated seats for all of you, and that you were just thinking of keeping quiet about the fact that they aren't travelling, rather than positively negotiating with the airline.

 

First, the fact that there are three more reservations for the flight will have an effect on the number of further bookings that the airline will take. Crudely, if they were to overbook to their limit, they might overbook by three less than if you cancelled the reservations now and freed up three seats. But this bears a very remote relationship to whether or not you'll have empty seats next to you, because if you don't check in these three "passengers" and the airline needs to get other people onboard, the seats next to you will be re-allocated to someone else at the appropriate time when it's become clear that these three tickets will no-show.

 

So the next stage is to actually check-in these three "passengers", even though they have no intention of flying. Now, if you're checking in with an agent, they may refuse to do the check in and to issue boarding passes unless the passengers are actually there - that will depend on the airline's procedures. So to rely on this, you might have to check them in remotely or at a kiosk, if they are available, and get boarding passes. At that point, the airline will believe that these passengers are travelling and won't reallocate the seats - just yet.

 

But when you get to the gate, the airline will only count as boarded all the passengers whose boarding passes they've taken. They won't take the boarding passes of people who aren't there, for obvious reasons. So there will come a time when they will decide that these three checked-in passengers are, for some reason, not turning up. If there are standby passengers at the gate who they need to get on, they will then use the seats of the unboarded passengers to get them on, basically cancelling the unboarded passengers' reservations to do so. (That's why you shouldn't be late at the gate if you're flying.)

 

Moreover, if they know that you were all supposed to be flying on the same booking, the gate agents might come on board and ask you what's happened to these three missing passengers who were travelling with you. The airline may be frantically paging for them through parts of the airport. And the whole process of trying to find out whether these three passengers are actually travelling, and then getting some standbys on when the airline decides that they are not going to show up, may well delay your flight and all your fellow passengers.

• Is any of this illegal? Probably not.
• Would you be embarrassed by the whole thing? That'll depend on the thickness of our skin.
• Will any of it get you any extra space? Maybe, maybe not. You'll get a chance, but that's about as much as can be said.
• Is it unethical? That'll be for you to decide.

If you don't want the tickets but it's not worth your while cancelling them, you might call the airline and see if they'd be prepared to treat the tickets as "extra space" tickets, much like some passengers are too big for one seat and have to buy two tickets. If they're prepared to do that, then this might be the way to go.

[Deloresgardella]

Thanks everyone for your reply and information. I will probably call the air line and tell that the other three people won't be going. I really wouldn't want to be embarrassed and have my vacation start on a sour note.

Delores

[Deloresgardella]

I just checked the airline on the computer and the plane that I am taking from SFO to ATL is completely booked so I will call tommorrow and give up the three extra seats. The prices were way down over the week end and it filled up fast.

Delores