We were scheduled to take the red-eye Delta flight to JFK on Monday, July 3rd leaving at 12:55am.  With a connecting flight in Minneapolis, we were scheduled to arrive at JFK around 9:30am on that Monday.  I booked this flight using Delta miles, and it was back in November — just about nine months ahead!  However, with that long amount of time, schedules were bound to be changed.  And they were.

I was checking my Delta Sky Miles account on a whim, and discovered that my account had an alert attached to it.  I clicked on the icon and that’s when I found out that our flights had been changed…

• The original flight from PDX – MSP was no longer leaving at 12:55am.  It was now leaving at 6:55am.
• This new arrival in Minneapolis rendered our connecting flight to JFK impossible because it would have already left by the time we landed.
• The new flight schedule said we’d now arrive at JFK on the evening of Monday, July 3rd, which basically changed a day in New York City into a day on the airplane.

The was some hope:  the alert stated that I could change the flight once at no charge and all I had to do was call the reservation line.  I checked my different options, and hoped for the best … I wasn’t expected much, since our flights had been booked with miles and I figured that we’d get some pretty crappy flight choices.

I am thrilled to report however that the reservation agent accepted my first request, a nonstop flight from PDX – JFK on Delta.  While we will not arrive mid-morning to spend most of the day in New York, we will now arrive before 4:00pm and will actually get to sleep a little bit the Sunday night before and we’ll have a flight that won’t force us to get off and get onto another plane.  The best part is that there really was no change fee and our miles were accepted for the new flight.  So ultimately, this travel troubleshooting worked out okay and it is just a nice reminder to check your confirmed flight reservations every now and then, especially if you are booked way out in advance.  I never received an email or call about my flight change, so had I not checked until a few days before our original departure, I probably would have not been able to book the alternative flight.  Fortunately this travel troubleshooting effort led to a happy ending…even though I just received another change to our flight.  But this was in minor — the plane is now leaving thirty minutes earlier, so no big deal.