<p>So I don’t want to sound like a paid advertisement or anything, but the service Jet Blue gave my D for her cancelled flight from SFO to BOS on Saturday deserves a shout out.</p>
<p>Trying to pick up a flight with several other carriers resulted in less than stellar help. Jet Blue agents kept trying different locals, different routes, different days. over and over. At first, she was delayed a week! Then got moved up to fly out from Long Beach through Las Vegas on Wed. (some improvement, but additional grief to go to LA) Then got moved to Wed out of SFO… but just put her on the first flight out today from SFO. She’ll only be a day late picking up her apartment and starting her internship at MIT. The phone agents kept trying every time we called. No fees.</p>
<p>Calling other airlines, they wouldn’t work with different airports, didn’t initiate any different routes. “No we have no flights today, shall I check tomorrow?” … uh, yeah!</p>
<p>Did any airline stand out to help you get over the rebooking required?</p>
<p>I was fortunate enough that we did not need to rebook any flights (D flew to NE on Friday), but I want to say that JetBlue agents do deserve two thumbs up! Every time I called, there was only minimal phone tag going on, and an agent speaking excellent English picked up the phone quickly. One time, I messed up the spelling of one of D’s friends’ name (trying to book a flight online for a half a dozen people on the same itinerary is a nightmare!), and the agents were very sympathetic and waived the change fee.</p>
<p>D2 was able to get on a Southwest flight this morning (SAN-BDL/Hartford). The SW agent couldn’t have been nicer. She really did something magical to get her on the flight.</p>
<p>We went to the airport hoping that she might get on a standby flight and fully expecting her to be home until her revised reservation on Wednesday. I am really impressed and grateful to this agent who went above and beyond.</p>
<p>Now hopefully we can all get past this Irene trauma and drama!</p>
<p>I’ve had Southwest agents often be helpful in getting me on the PRIOR flight if I show up early enough to notice the prior flight is still there and won’t be leaving for another 3 to 5 minutes and want to hop on that one to get back earlier. The only downside to this is that I often end up with a center seat as a result but that’s not too big of a deal for a San Jose to San Diego flight. I’ve had American be decidedly unhelpful when I’ve tried this with them but maybe it was the luck of the draw on the particular people staffing the gates at the time.</p>
<p>The Southwest agents I dealt with were great when I was stuck in DC in the big Feb. blizzard a couple of years ago. I was trying to fly out of Baltimore. They kept pushing the re-opening of the airport later and later and I had to reschedule 3 times. One agent even complimented “me” on being so nice about it. I took that to mean everyone wasn’t.</p>