What to do when an airline changes your flight

Even when the travel industry isn’t dealing with crises, airline schedule changes are commonplace.

A carrier may decrease the frequency of service to a given destination or adjust flight departure times to optimize aircraft utilization. Sometimes, a flight booked several months in advance will undergo multiple changes before the plane actually flies. Airlines sometimes wait a few months or weeks before deciding whether to operate a flight. This can be due to changes in demand, equipment adjustments or any number of other reasons.

For example, back in 2022, a holiday meltdown initially sparked by foul weather caused Southwest to cancel some 3,000 flights per day. This wreaked havoc on hundreds of thousands of holiday vacations, leaving passengers stuck, in some cases, for days.

As a paying passenger, it’s critical to understand how to handle a situation like this.

Here are strategies for dealing with schedule changes.

Learning about a schedule change

Before getting into those strategies, it’s important to address how you can stay informed regarding schedule changes. Unfortunately, this varies significantly depending on your airline and how far away from your departure date you are.

In some cases, an airline will send you an email when it makes a change to your itinerary. This could happen even with insignificant adjustments — like a new flight number with the same times.

Here’s an example of an email I received with a five-minute adjustment to my arrival time for a flight I booked to Madrid (which I ultimately canceled for unrelated reasons).

However, some airlines will only send these notifications if you’re within a few months of departure. As a result, it’s critical to periodically check your itineraries on your own. You need to carefully tend to your reservations just as you would periodically check on your plants.

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Another great tool in your arsenal for schedule changes is ExpertFlyer (owned by TPG’s parent company, Red Ventures). This platform is best known for its award-search capabilities. However, it can also alert you when an airline adjusts the schedule of a flight. Add your individual flight details, and the platform will automatically search for changes until your departure.

Note that this functionality is part of the premium subscription, which is $9.99 per month (or $99.99 for a full year).

There are other services we use, including an app called Flighty. Sometimes, Flighty informs us of schedule changes even before the airline does. As you can see in the screenshot below, it will also let you know when your aircraft changes, which can mean a seat change as well.

You can also simply type your airline and flight number into Google, and it will give you a fairly accurate picture of your flight status.

A final way to stay informed of schedule changes is to regularly check your flights manually. You don’t need to do this every day or even every week. However, it pays to log in to your frequent flyer accounts every few weeks and peek at your upcoming trips. The earlier you can identify a change to your itinerary, the easier it is to deal with it.

Related: Are you entitled to compensation for an equipment swap?

Deciding on a plan

Once you become aware of a schedule change, the next thing to do is figure out a plan for dealing with it. Generally, you have three options:

• Do nothing. In some cases, like my above example with Iberia, the schedule change isn’t significant enough to warrant any action on your part. You’re still planning to take the flight, even with the change. Some airlines might require you to acknowledge and accept the change. On others, you may automatically be confirmed on the new flight.
• Get a refund. In other instances, the change may be significant enough that you no longer want to take the flight at all, and no alternative itinerary works with your schedule. Here, you’d pursue getting a refund.
• Find a different route. A significant schedule change may be an opportunity to get rebooked on a different flight — one of the best ways to make the most of these changes.

The initial one is simple enough: You accept the change and plan to take your new flight(s). However, the other two are a bit more nuanced, so let’s unpack them.

Getting a full refund

If there’s been a significant schedule change to your itinerary and you no longer want to take your flight, you’re entitled to a refund. Unfortunately, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were a lot of instances of airlines refusing to issue refunds. In fact, monthly data from the U.S. Department of Transportation showed refunds and other ticket issues as the primary cause of DOT complaints during the height of the outbreak.

However, the DOT came down firmly on the side of the consumer, clarifying that if an airline cancels your flight (or makes a significant adjustment to the schedule), you are entitled to a full refund in your original form of payment. While some airlines continued to buck this rule, most eventually fell in line.

Indeed, in the years since then, those rules have been enshrined in the law. The DOT will now require airlines to issue automatic refunds to passengers when flights are canceled or when itineraries are significantly delayed or changed. Airlines will be required to automatically issue refunds within seven days for passengers who booked their flight with a credit card and within 20 days for other forms of payment. However, airlines are only required to issue a refund if you don't use the ticket and if your flight is three hours off of schedule for domestic trips and six hours for international trips.

Most airlines have specific thresholds for what counts as a “significant” schedule change. Generally, a significant change is when your departure, arrival or connection times change by somewhere between one and two hours or if you’re rebooked from a nonstop flight to a connecting itinerary. That's usually when you can get airlines to make adjustments to your trip.

If you notice your trip has been hit with a major schedule change, research the individual airline’s policy to see if it counts as “significant” enough for a refund. Then, you can call to cancel the itinerary or do so online (with some airlines). Just be crystal clear with the phone agent, or read the terms of the online cancellation very closely.

Finding an alternate (better) flight

Other times, the schedule change may be significant, but you still want to take the trip — just not on the new itinerary. Maybe your flight now leaves three hours earlier, and you can’t take off work to catch it. Or maybe the airline has reduced your connection time from two hours to 38 minutes. Even if it’s still a “legal” connection (within the airport’s minimum connection time, or MCT), you may not be comfortable with it.

In this case, you may suddenly find yourself in the driver’s seat; most airlines will work hard to accommodate you on a new route — even if it’s more expensive than your original ticket.

For example, I had an American Airlines flight home from New Mexico that included a connection through Chicago's O’Hare International Airport (ORD) on my way back to Florida. This routing wasn’t the most convenient, but it was the only decent award option at the time. When the schedule changed, however, I was able to change to a flight through Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). This meant less travel time and an earlier arrival back home. The new routing wasn’t available at the price I paid, but the airline was able to make the switch because of the schedule change.

What if you’re booked on a partner airline?

Things get a bit trickier if you use miles from one program for award flights operated by a different, partner airline. If you book far enough in advance, you’ll likely experience at least one schedule change before departure. If that change is significant, you might struggle to get rebooked.

If this happens far in advance (a week or more) of your flight, you should start with the airline you booked through — even though a different carrier is operating the flight. Ideally, that airline can reaccommodate you on one of its own flights or on a different itinerary that still has awards available.

However, this gets much more complicated when your desired routing isn’t open for awards. In this case, your best bet is to ask the booking airline to work with its alliance liaison at the partner airline to try to “force” availability. If that fails, have a fall-back plan.

I faced this exact situation in fall 2018. I redeemed United Airlines MileagePlus miles for a one-way, business-class flight from Slovenia’s Ljubljana Joze Pucnik Airport (LJU) to Miami International Airport (MIA) via Vienna Airport (VIE). The initial leg was operated by Adria Airways — before it ceased operations — and the long-haul segment was operated by Austrian Airlines.

Five months before departure, Austrian shifted to a seasonal Vienna-Miami flight, so we were rebooked on the following:

• Adria Airways from LJU to VIE (same as before)
• Austrian Airlines from Vienna Airport to Munich Airport (MUC)
• Lufthansa from MUC to MIA

This new routing involved an early-morning flight from Vienna and a short connection in Munich, so it was less than ideal. A much better option would’ve been the nonstop flight on Adria Airways from Ljubljana to Munich, giving us an overnight at Munich Airport (and a chance to visit the between-terminals Christmas market) — but there were no award seats on that flight.

After multiple phone calls to United Airlines and pleas for it to work with Adria Airways, we got nowhere. Eventually, I figured out we could take a shuttle bus from Ljubljana to Trieste, Italy; then, we could fly from Trieste Airport (TRS) to Munich and on to Miami the next day. Since the Lufthansa flight from TRS-MUC did have award availability, United could easily make that change.

Ultimately, you should really push the airline you originally booked through to get you a route that works, even if it’s a partner airline that made the change. Also, have a last resort in case all else fails.

Related: Best websites for searching Oneworld, Star Alliance and SkyTeam award availability

Bottom line

Booking a new trip is exciting, as it gives you something to look forward to.

Unfortunately, just because you reserve a flight in advance doesn’t mean it will operate on that exact schedule. This has never been more true, as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic and other recent travel meltdowns.

Fortunately, there are important things to do if you fall victim to a significant schedule change. By staying informed and carefully considering all of your options, you may be able to turn a messed-up itinerary into a much better routing — or even a full refund.

Related reading:

• The best time to book flights for the cheapest airfare
  
  
• The best airline credit cards
• What exactly are airline miles, anyway?
• 6 real-life strategies you can use when your flight is canceled or delayed
• Maximize your airfare: The best credit cards for booking flights
• The best credit cards to reach elite status
• What are points and miles worth? TPG’s monthly valuations