Airlines make small changes to flights all the time. There are several reasons why this could happen, and the further out your flight is, the more the chances are that you’ll get a notification that your flight is now scheduled a few minutes earlier or later than originally planned.
It’s one thing for your flight time to depart or arrive a couple of minutes earlier or later. But a Reddit user named Corey Chapman, who goes by u/Longjumping-Grape-40 on the site, had a totally different change; American moved them to a flight that lands at a completely different airport! From Reddit:
Yup, instead of flying from PHL at 6:45pm and arriving at LAX at 9:58pm, American Airlines told them they’re now leaving Philly at 6:30pm, only to arrive at San Diego (SAN) at 9:42pm.
That’s a difference of almost 123 miles!
Chapman told Newsweek the other day that they have reservations to fly to Europe in December and return in January. They also said they were kind of stunned when they got the email from American that they had changed their entire airport.
“I’m used to small schedule changes, especially when I book so far in advance, but I’ve never had an airport changed, much less to a whole other city,” said Chapman.
Chapman posted the flight update to Reddit’s r/mildlyinfuriating subreddit, where it’s gotten over 11k upvotes. Some of the responses to the post were, shall we say, typical Reddit…
- “It’s a beautiful drive, everyone has to do it once…” — JCfromHourly_io
- “They can drive by Disneyland and see the Matterhorn on their way through traffic. That’s definitely worth it!” — Longjumping-Grape-40 (yes, they commented on their own post)
- They could have at least done John Wayne Airport. Better to fly into anyway imo. — DisappointingPanda
- This has happened to me – apparently the San Diego airport closes at midnight so if you’re delayed past then they’re forced to divert — MM-Beh (clarification from “vanso”: It’s too close to residential so there are landing restrictions at night. The airport is not closed per se but landing at night is very expensive.)
- Up until I read this comment, I was assuming SAN meant Francisco, and was altogether mind blown. Not that this change doesn’t still suck, but it’s way less shi**y than I originally thought. — cocoon_eclostion_moth (someone needs to start reading YMMV more LOL)
- I first read Santiago instead of San Diego and I was absolutely shocked thinking they changed the continent hoping they could get away with it. And was thinking all the mentions to cab rides where sarcasm. — PinWest4210
- Close enough, it’ll just be a quick 2.5 hour cab ride — downwardspiralstairs
- I took a flight once from Palm Springs to San Francisco. Except we got stuck circling the Bay Area until we ran out of fuel, landed in San Jose, and stuck on the tarmac for three hours while they figured out how to get just a little bit of fuel to make the jump to SFO. I could’ve taken BART and been home before the plane finally landed in SFO. 🙅 — thepunalwaysrises
- Plus we are getting him there 15 minutes earlier. He should be thanking us. — velhaconta
- San Jose… Puerto Rico — theillustratedlife
- FYI. The train tracks between LA and SD have been shut down twice in the past year due to landslides. The substitute buses didn’t allow luggage — DragonfruitOdd8884
- That ain’t no LaGuardia switch to JFK like they are playing it off. That’s a “babe I don’t know if I’ll be home for Christmas” movie starter distance. — secretservicegnome
- But you’re getting there 16 minutes early! — Santos_L_Halper_II
- Saddest part; if you keep the change your bags will end up in SAN and if you change it back, they’ll go to LAX. You’re not winning this OP but good luck. — Helpful_Candidate_92
- You are probably gonna get put on a bus — iampatmanbeyond
Chapman replied to a handful of responses, essentially saying he was were going to contact American and make them give him a flight to L.A., not San Jose: “I’m gonna make them change it back to San Diego. No way in hell I’m gonna let them force me to pay extra money and time because they changed me.”
American Airlines told Newsweek: “We apologize for the schedule change that impacted Mr. Chapman’s upcoming travel plans. A member of our team has reached out to address his concerns and provide the best available travel options to San Diego.”
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
2 comments
Happened to us once.Air France dropped us off in Marseille vs Nice without luggage(union issue) .. A 3 hour drive away.. AF elites got Limos to Nice we had to rent a tiny little smart car-the last car left to rent.AF was no help at all.
I booked a trip on AA (ABQ>LAX>HND, KIX>LAX>ABQ) eight months ahead, figuring if my reservation was in early it probably had less chance of being cancelled. Imagine my surprise when a month before my trip I looked at the tickets and discovered my return flight from Osaka to LAX had vanished entirely, although they still expected me to make it to my LAX to ABQ flight. I got it squared away with a call to AA asking them if they still planned to bring me back home. The agent agreed it was very silly, but didn’t seem at all surprised by it. I wonder if most of her job is fixing strandings and weirdly rerouted flights when the algorithms screw up reservations.