Schedule Change By Airlines: How to Tackle Them!

Airlines don’t guarantee their flight schedules. Schedule changes are common occurrences and cause inconvenience to travellers. Problem magnifies in case it’s a long journey like flights to India. What can one do to tackle the issue? Made meticulous preparations for holidays to India? Booked flights to India well in advance? And yet you ended up staring at the wrong end of the barrel! Well, even the most carefully planned holidays can run into bad weather if your airline decides to change the schedule of your flight. All airlines change their schedules from time to time. They are constantly cancelling, rerouting and rescheduling flights. It is not wrong to say that most often it is the low-cost airlines and financially struggling carriers that make drastic changes to their flight routes and schedules. This is done to find a formula for profitability! Having said this, it is important to repeat that ‘all airlines change their schedules from time to time’ and not even the big five-star carriers are untouched by this phenomenon! For travellers, especially those undertaking long journeys like London to India, any change in the flight schedule can create havoc to their travel itineraries. Following is some information that may assist travellers to deal with changes in their flight schedules to India or some other destination for that matter. First of all, know that it’s a passenger right to be notified in advance of the details of schedule changes. Also, before accepting a change for your flight schedule, ensure that it is not in fact a cancellation. One of the first things you can do after receiving a schedule change email from an airline or travel agent is to check out the new itinerary cautiously. Ensure that the airline has given you enough time to make connections, if any. In case you are not satisfied with your new travel plans, call up the airline/agent to know about your alternatives. In some cases an airline will be able to offer you seats on flight that run closer to your original flight times, while on other instances they may offer you a refund if they are not able to schedule you on a different flight. However, travellers must bear in mind that in case they opt for a refund, they are without a flight! And in case you need to travel urgently and are forced to book close to the departure date then most chances are that you will end up paying much more on last minute deal for flights to India. This stings even more painfully in case you were able to net tickets on cheap flights to India earlier! As mentioned earlier, travellers must bear in mind that in case of significant changes, airlines will give you a refund if the schedule changes made by them are not acceptable to you. This includes the connecting flights on single bookings. However, an airline is not responsible for any connecting flight that the traveller may have booked under different reservations. Keeping this factor in mind, it is recommended that travellers booking long haul flights to India must avoid booking different travel components independently with different companies. This is the time when your travel insurance might come to your recue. Schedule changes can be particularly damaging if travellers have booked connecting flights in a bid to grab cheap flights to India. Travel insurance is a fine way to prevent the financial losses of schedule changes. While this may seem more like a precaution than the cure, travellers must avoid making plans that are too rigid and depend too much on the exact timings of the flights. Have a contingency plan just in case! It is also highly important to make sure that the airline with which you have made you bookings has your correct contact information. It often happens that airlines are unable to reach the traveller when they need to notify the schedule change for the flights. It is not a bad idea to set your spam filter to accept notification e-mails from the carrier or the travel agent.