An OMAAT reader shared an incredibly frustrating experience he recently had, and asked for my take. This is one of those situations where the traveler gets screwed, and actually making things right is extremely complicated.

Flight misconnect triggers a mess of an itinerary

Jamie was recently traveling from Dublin (DUB) to Auckland (AKL) on a cash business class ticket booked through Singapore Airlines. He was scheduled to fly on Aer Lingus from Dublin to Paris (CDG), then on Singapore Airlines to Singapore (SIN), and then on a Singapore Airlines codeshare on Air New Zealand to Auckland. His first layover was scheduled to be 1hr45min, while his second layover was scheduled to be 1hr10min.

The initial Aer Lingus flight was delayed by around two hours, so to avoid misconnecting, he was denied check-in and told he needed to be rerouted, which is fair enough. Unfortunately this is where things go (way) downhill. I know this is long, but a lot happened, and I don’t think I can summarize it any more succinctly:

The Aer Lingus staff were a disaster. I asked them if I should call Singapore Airlines for assistance with the rerouting, they insisted firmly that I should not do so. I asked them to try to reroute onto the same itinerary with SQ, or similar via mainland Europe or the UK, which they ignored. I eventually was handed a printed confirmation and emailed with routing through Qatar on QR the following day, and was put in an overnight hotel in Dublin.

When I arrived at the airport to check in for the Qatar flight, the flight manager told me I wasn’t on the flight. After returning to Aer Lingus customer service I was told I had been rerouted again (possibly good to contact passengers if this happens?!), this time via LHR, with the first leg on Aer Lingus, then to DXB on British Airways, and finally AKL on Emirates. I was handed another printed confirmation, but only given boarding passes for the first two flights, when I asked for the third I was told they couldn’t do it and I would need to collect it at LHR.

At LHR, after asking British Airways representatives at the lounge for my flight for my onwards boarding pass, they told me that they could not see any flights beyond DXB (to quote the lounge agent after I explained the situation: “how could you expect me to print a boarding pass if you’ve made two separate bookings.” – good to see BA’s still saving on staff training at LHR).

I am usually quite a reserved and resolved person while travelling – I’ve been doing so from a very early age but for the first time in my life of travel I was in tears on the second flight due to the stress. The British Airways crew on this flight helped to calm me down and explained that it probably was because EK and BA don’t interline. How ridiculous is it to rebook someone onto two airlines that can’t even see each other’s flights? Is that even allowed??

Upon landing 30 minutes delayed, I had to self navigate a terminal transfer in Dubai, which as I’m sure you know is much easier said than done. All in all it took over an hour and involved a substantial amount of running and security checkpoints. When I finally arrived at the first available EK transfer desk, the flight had closed and I was told that Aer Lingus had failed to check me in for the third flight (WTF!?).

It was after a very tense phone call that they re-opened the flight to check me in, and only because I only had carry-on luggage. I finally made it home over a day late and absolutely shattered. At no point did Singapore Airlines make any effort to get in contact with me over the disruptions.

I got in touch with SQ afterwards who shared perhaps the bluntest customer service email I’ve ever received, telling me it wasn’t their fault, they wouldn’t help with EU261 claims. Further, they insisted that I could do nothing about claiming Air NZ Airpoints even though I took every reasonable step to board the flights.

I’ve now been in a standoff with Air NZ, because while SQ uses the U booking class for business fares, they use it for Premium Economy, and they’re not entertaining the idea that I was booked in business even though I have my booking confirmations and even had business seats selected.

Jamies asks me the following questions:

I mostly just want to know what to do here – are SQ really not responsible at all for the disruption that happened on their (very expensive) ticket? Do you think Aer Lingus was trying to save money by booking me on an incongruous itinerary, and is that even legal? What on earth do I do about these points, how is it ok to deny them after an involuntary reroute?!

My take on this incredibly frustrating travel experience

I feel really bad for Jamie here — he booked an expensive business class ticket, did absolutely nothing wrong, and got totally screwed. Period. Talk about an immense amount of stress and inconvenience to deal with, after paying a huge premium for the privilege of traveling in comfort. So, let me share my thoughts on a few fronts.

The first lesson here is that I simply wouldn’t recommend booking a ticket like this, if at all avoidable. There’s just too much that can go wrong when you’re looking at two short connections on an ultra long haul itinerary, especially when you’re booking a ticket between interline partners that don’t even have a very close level of cooperation.

Let me be clear, I don’t want to victim blame here — Jamie did nothing wrong by booking a ticket like this, because the airline sold it. However, I just want to provide practical advice, so that travelers can minimize their odds of having a similar experience.

The advancements we’ve seen over the years in being able to book tickets between interline partners is great when everything goes as planned, but when things go wrong, it’s a complete disaster, as you’re passed off between airlines. The longer your layovers and the fewer number of airlines on a ticket, the better (or at least try to book airlines that cooperate closely together, like with a joint venture).

So, which airline is to blame here? If you misconnect, the airline that caused the missed connection is responsible for rebooking you. This is the rule across the industry. So Aer Lingus was indeed on the hook for getting Jamie to his final destination.

Obviously that’s easier said than done, and the way Jamie was treated here was embarrassingly bad. He was first rebooked on a Qatar Airways itinerary the following day, and then rebooked on British Airways flight connecting to an Emirates flight. What an absolute mess, because Aer Lingus and Emirates have a ticketing interline agreement, but British Airways and Emirates don’t.

I don’t know what the Aer Lingus representatives handling Jamie’s reservation were thinking, because this was a terrible way to handle the rebooking. The issue is that he’s now getting the runaround — even though Singapore Airlines issued the ticket, it isn’t responsible when another airline causes the missed connection. That’s not to say the airline shouldn’t aim to provide good service and do what it can, but based on how rules are published, the airline isn’t wrong.

Aer Lingus would be on the hook for EC261 compensation. The issue is actually getting the airline — or any party here — to care beyond that. I’ll of course write about this and will forward this to some contacts, but I’m not surprised that this is turning into a mess. These kinds of situations are where airline customer service is woefully insufficient.

So, if I had found myself in Jamie’s situation, what would I have done differently? I wasn’t there, so I obviously can’t say anything with certainty (and I’m also not sure to what extent Jamie tried these things):

• If I really wanted to stick to a similar routing, I would’ve pushed harder and tried to escalate to keep the same routing, and might’ve even reached out to Singapore Airlines to try to rebook (even though it’s not their responsibility)
• As soon as I was rebooked on Qatar Airways, I would’ve tried to check-in online and manage my reservation there, just to make sure everything looked correct, and I would’ve checked back a couple of times before departure
• I would’ve just rejected the rebooking on British Airways connecting to Emirates and asked for a different routing, because being rebooked between two non-interline partners with a short connection isn’t good

All of that is of course easy to say in hindsight. No matter how you slice it, Jamie did nothing wrong, and this was collectively handled very poorly by airlines.

Bottom line

While interline agreements are useful in terms of letting you book tickets that involve travel on multiple airlines that don’t otherwise partner, things quickly become messy when there are irregular operations. The shorter your connections and the more airlines are involved, the higher the chances of things going poorly.

OMAAT reader Jamie had perhaps the perfect storm of issues, when he misconnected on a Singapore Airlines ticket, where the first segment was on Aer Lingus. At a minimum, let this act as a warning before you book such a ticket, because these kinds of situations are where airlines really struggle to take any accountability, or to find acceptable solutions.

What do you make of this frustrating travel experience?