Beware of Irene!!!

[Len90]

We can agree to disagree on this but both airlines cancelled thousands of flights and lost hub cities for a couple of days. I do feel that the size of the airline should have some sort of effect to the size of customer service. That being said I would have expected hold times close to an hour with continental but they were just not taking any calls at all. It was as if they shut down completely. I feel that a person should also be entitled to a full refund if the airline cancels your flight and can't accommodate you. Brian and his family had to spend money on renting a car and driving it over 1,000 miles. The airline turns around and only refunds them half of the price of the tickets that they couldn't use afterwards... To me it's a bad move. I've flown continental all over the country and they truly are a great airline. In fact, they are one of the few airlines my family and I will fly. I just personally feel like they could have handled this situation a bit better.

[mindflipper]

Not knowing Continental's circumstances and the constraints they were under post-storm, I don't really think any of us can judge if their service afterwards was fair or poor. We can only sympathize for those who were unfortunately inconvenienced as a result...

[Brian845]

Sorry to cause confusion...Continental is supposedly refunding half the *round trip* fare, since we used our tickets from Newark to MCO wihtout any problems. We'll see if it actually goes through on their end in "7-10 business days". Under the circumstances I don't think they're obligated to refund anything at all, so I think they are providing good customer service to refund the cost of the flight home (if they actually do).

[Amy]

Sorry to cause confusion...Continental is supposedly refunding half the *round trip* fare, since we used our tickets from Newark to MCO wihtout any problems. We'll see if it actually goes through on their end in "7-10 business days". Under the circumstances I don't think they're obligated to refund anything at all, so I think they are providing good customer service to refund the cost of the flight home (if they actually do).

I'm guessing that if they told you they would refund the money, they will. I agree, to refund anything when it is a problem beyond their control is pretty good customer service, plus as you said, you had used half the fare anyhow.

[Wizzard419]

One of the ISPs is refusing (they are supposedly backtracking on it now) to issue refunds for the time the service was down, citing it as an "Act of God" and therefore not their problem so you have to pay up even if it was physically impossible to use the service.

[mindflipper]

Sorry to cause confusion...Continental is supposedly refunding half the *round trip* fare, since we used our tickets from Newark to MCO wihtout any problems. We'll see if it actually goes through on their end in "7-10 business days". Under the circumstances I don't think they're obligated to refund anything at all, so I think they are providing good customer service to refund the cost of the flight home (if they actually do).

That's not actually bad when you think about it. Sounds like Continental is being pretty nice really...

[Brian845]

We got our refund from Continental, and it ended up being *more* than half of the entire round trip fare...I don't know how they calculated it, but I'm not going to complain! It even paid for the majority of the rental car (which was about $800 with tax and included car seats and GPS)...

[mindflipper]

We got our refund from Continental, and it ended up being *more* than half of the entire round trip fare...I don't know how they calculated it, but I'm not going to complain! It even paid for the majority of the rental car (which was about $800 with tax and included car seats and GPS)...

Congrats, Brian! Looks like Continental really came through for you in the end (I wonder if they were reading this website LOL?!)...

[Len90]

We got our refund from Continental, and it ended up being *more* than half of the entire round trip fare...I don't know how they calculated it, but I'm not going to complain! It even paid for the majority of the rental car (which was about $800 with tax and included car seats and GPS)...

Congrats, Brian! Looks like Continental really came through for you in the end (I wonder if they were reading this website LOL?!)...

Good to see Continental did the right thing. Keep in mind when you book a round trip ticket it is not just half the fare for each flight. Every flight has a different fare class so it does work out to be an uneven split. I am very happy to hear that it worked out for you and that all the airlines were doing the right thing. Keep in mind the reason for this was your original flight being cancelled and the airline being unable to rebook you in a timely fashion

[Amy]

We got our refund from Continental, and it ended up being *more* than half of the entire round trip fare...I don't know how they calculated it, but I'm not going to complain! It even paid for the majority of the rental car (which was about $800 with tax and included car seats and GPS)...

Congrats, Brian! Looks like Continental really came through for you in the end (I wonder if they were reading this website LOL?!)...

Good to see Continental did the right thing. Keep in mind when you book a round trip ticket it is not just half the fare for each flight. Every flight has a different fare class so it does work out to be an uneven split. I am very happy to hear that it worked out for you and that all the airlines were doing the right thing. Keep in mind the reason for this was your original flight being cancelled and the airline being unable to rebook you in a timely fashion

I'm glad everything worked out well for you too!
Len, I didn't realize the fares weren't evenly split between going and coming ~ learned something new today

[mindflipper]

I was surprised that they didn't try to put them on another airline instead (US Air, Delta, etc.)...

[Amy]

I was surprised that they didn't try to put them on another airline instead (US Air, Delta, etc.)...

Wouldn't all the airlines have had the same problem though?

[Len90]

I was surprised that they didn't try to put them on another airline instead (US Air, Delta, etc.)...

Every airline was in the same situation and would have to go by their alliances when moving around passengers. Continental/United is part of the Star Alliance along with US Airways and numerous other internationals. Delta is Sky Team and the only US airline in that alliance. The same goes for American Airlines in the Oneworld alliance. JetBlue and Southwest are not a member of any alliances however there are talks of jetBlue going into Star Alliance or Oneworld. The airline industry is changing. No longer do you just have code share partners like years ago. Now airlines are allied to offer people the world.

[mindflipper]

While they may be limited in the number of direct flights between Orlando and a certain destination, they could send you instead to another hub/airport elsewhere where you could connect with another flight there heading to the original destination. It could be possible if that other airport does not already have that heavy traffic to that destination.

[Len90]

While they may be limited in the number of direct flights between Orlando and a certain destination, they could send you instead to another hub/airport elsewhere where you could connect with another flight there heading to the original destination. It could be possible if that other airport does not already have that heavy traffic to that destination.

That is exactly what airlines were doing. However keep in mind that the airlines were down a hub with the NY area airports shut. Secondly every airport and every airline had the same issue. The airlines were booking with connections but there is a limit to how many seats they had like that as well.