More flight ease drama

[LAFFNVEGAS]

5 hours ago, jettaleea said:

I got the same notice...twice! A little unnerving. There's no way to get reasonable flights ourselves at this point.

I got the samenotice 15 times all going to spam, and a friend that is on a different reservation also received this notification 15 times. On top of that I thought our full flight was all ticketed, it appears only the return flight was and our flight going to Amsterdam for 4 of us has now been canceled. 

[Roz]

23 hours ago, LAFFNVEGAS said:

On top of that I thought our full flight was all ticketed, it appears only the return flight was and our flight going to Amsterdam for 4 of us has now been canceled. 

 

Oh no!  What are you going to do?

[Mary229]

23 hours ago, LAFFNVEGAS said:

I got the samenotice 15 times all going to spam, and a friend that is on a different reservation also received this notification 15 times. On top of that I thought our full flight was all ticketed, it appears only the return flight was and our flight going to Amsterdam for 4 of us has now been canceled. 

Call HAL and get them to buy you a flight.  They will pay the additional costs. What stress!

[Mary229]

9 minutes ago, Mary229 said:

Call HAL and get them to buy you a flight.  They will pay the additional costs. What stress!

See Terry’s post 47 on page 2

[LAFFNVEGAS]

34 minutes ago, Roz said:

 

Oh no!  What are you going to do?

While I was a bit upset to be honest I was not concerned. Knew there was stuff going on with United especially since both their website and app were acting funky as I told my friends flying with me that we just need to give it a day or two to work this through.

It ends up by later in the afternoon the flights reappeared for all of us. This happened much quicker than I thought. The only thing was none of our seats we had previous selected there showing. We again waited a few hours, then we all jumped in and juust added seats for both the missing flights. I beleive Tom and I are a different row for the flight to Amsterdam but we are good with what we have and the others are sitting near us.

 

 

32 minutes ago, Mary229 said:

Call HAL and get them to buy you a flight.  They will pay the additional costs. What stress!

In all honesty calling HAL's Flight Ease is IMPOSSIBLE especially when they send out 15 emails in a row saying DO NOT CALL US. The email said they were working on it so that is what we needed to let them do. But trust me I continue and will keep checking the flight daily on all the apps of the three airlines involved. I have a feeling yesterdays problems were United's and not Flight Ease but the emails HAL sent out did not help the way it was worded.

For the most part I do think they are attempting to stay on top of things and that too many want to take things into their own hands to attempt to control it. We have to just let them handle the problems. By us stepping in and waiting om hold for MANY hours frustrating ourselves and taking up the time of the Rep at both the airline and Flight Ease we are doing nothing but upsetting ourselves and assisting in making sure it take them longer to get things handled.

[Torquer]

Secret to Getting into FlightEase Website to Manage Bookings

 

Like many people, I have had numerous problems over the past months getting into FlightEase to manage my flights for an upcoming cruise.  I used to get the error message:
We are unable to process your request. Please try again later or call us at the number listed on the page for assistance.
Well I finally figured out a way around it that now works 100% of the time for me.  If you are having trouble, please try this to see if it works for you.  Since this technique fixes it, it is obviously a bug in HAL's HTML/JavaScript coding.  Here are the steps.

 

1. I use Firefox under Windows.  If you try it with a different browser or OS, then I have no idea if it will work and you will have to figure out the equivalent commands.
2. Login to the HAL website and go to "Already Booked" and then "Manage My Bookings"
3. Click "Travel Planning" and then "Pre & Post Cruise Travel"
4. Click "Flights" and then "Begin"
5. You are now on the "FlightEase" web page.  Do not hit "Book and Manage Flights" yet.
6. In the Firefox browser menu bar, click "Tools" and then "Settings".  If you don't always have this menu bar showing at the top of the browser, you can click on the "hamburger" icon (the three horizontal lines icon...google "hamburger icon" if you don't know what I am talking about), and then click "Settings" from there.
7. From the Settings Menu, click "Privacy & Security"
8. Scroll down to the History section.  Click on "Clear History..."
9. Make sure "Cache" is checked.  I have everything else unchecked and I think it will work if other items are checked, but that will affect your browsing experience, so I would recommend just checking "Cache" and have all the other boxes unchecked.  Then click "OK" and close the "Settings" tab on the browser.
10. Go back to the "FlightEase" web page tab and now hit "Book and Manage Flights" and you can view and change your flights.

 

Please follow these steps precisely as written, and let us know if it works or does not work.  As I said, it has worked 100% of the time for me for the past 3 weeks after I figured out this technique.  If this is working for others, I can post a series of screenshot photos that show the exact steps of what to click. 

 

If you are getting a different error message from FlightEase, then this technique will likely not work, but this error message is very common as I have seen numerous posts on it.  And as I said, I can not guarantee it will work for other browsers/OS, but it works perfectly with Firefox on Windows.

[terrydtx]

We are very worried about our flights booked with FE for our business class tickets departing from SAT to Rome on August 2nd returning from Venice on Sept 5th for our August 21 Oosterdam cruise. This cruise had an itinerary change in April for the departing port being moved from Venice to Trieste on Sept 21. HAL immediately froze all FE reservations in the system to allow them time to make any needed changes for air flights to accommodate the change to Trieste. It has been impossible to pull up our flights in FE since this happened. We do not need any changes since we are flying to Rome 18 days before our Oosterdam cruise departs and our flights home are the day after we disembark the cruise. We made our final payments to HAL last week and after a long wait on hold with FE, we were told that HAL and FE: will not pay for our airfare until 30 days from the cruise departure which is only 12 days before our air departure to Rome. I tried explaining this to the FE agent and she said no way they pay any earlier than 30 days out. She said if I do not like this, we could cancel our flights and book direct with the airline. I have to admit the fares we booked on FE were $2000pp less than what we could book this late ourselves direct. Since we cannot pull up our flights online in FE we could not request immediate ticketing, I brought this up with the FE agent and she said for our cruise no FE flights are being paid more than 30 days out from departure regardless of requests to do so. Our biggest fear after reading about the above horror stories, is that United and Delta will not wait until 12 days our from our departure and cancel our flights, which are almost sold out for business class.

[Vict0riann]

@terrydtx, that's really interesting.  We had been told, a few years ago, that we couldn't use FE if we had too much time before the cruise, and as we usually spend some time somewhere in Europe, before a cruise back to the US, or vice versa, we have always only booked one end of the journey with FE.  But you're been "allowed" to book 18 days before your cruise.  I guess one reason not to do that is the problem you're having now.

[LAFFNVEGAS]

1 minute ago, Vict0riann said:

@terrydtx, that's really interesting.  We had been told, a few years ago, that we couldn't use FE if we had too much time before the cruise, and as we usually spend some time somewhere in Europe, before a cruise back to the US, or vice versa, we have always only booked one end of the journey with FE.  But you're been "allowed" to book 18 days before your cruise.  I guess one reason not to do that is the problem you're having now.

Hi, that is werid you had been told not to spend too much time before you cruise. I know of many that have dones this over the years. Although more have done it for post cruise with several weeks before flight home with no problems Pre Covid. I will also say that pre covid Flight Ease would ticket anywhere from soon after final was  amde till about 45 days prior without asking them to ticket it. They would also often ticket Business and First Class before final was made if there were additional funds paid on the reservation more than just the deposit to lock in pricing. I do agree that now that they only ticket at 30 days it does make it a bit harder to do a week or more pre cruise.

I know it was mentioned about not ticketing till 30 days till the actual cruise date but my experience has been 30 days from the actual departure flight. I think with Terry's situation the 30 days from sailing has more to do with the Oosterdam and the change of embarkation port rather than across the board of other cruise flights.

[Vict0riann]

Maybe our PCC just didn't like the bother.  We usually do a few stopovers...

 

Now we have a new PCC.  I have never discussed it with her, just took it for granted we were on our own...

[terrydtx]

20 minutes ago, Vict0riann said:

@terrydtx, that's really interesting.  We had been told, a few years ago, that we couldn't use FE if we had too much time before the cruise, and as we usually spend some time somewhere in Europe, before a cruise back to the US, or vice versa, we have always only booked one end of the journey with FE.  But you're been "allowed" to book 18 days before your cruise.  I guess one reason not to do that is the problem you're having now.

I do not think that has anything to do with my issues, nothing was said about it by FE and we had zero problems seeing our flights until the day in April when our departure port was changed to Trieste. Our flights still show up in my United  and Delta accounts, they just haven't been paid for yet by HAL and FE. We first booked our flights  last October and we subsequently made several changes through FE online when schedules changed or lower prices were found for our business class seats. The problem that is being told to me and my very experienced TA is that the FE policy for at least our cruise is the airfare will NOT be paid until 30 days out from our cruise departure. FE claims this is true for anyone using FE on our Oosterdam cruise. BTW before the departure port change in April we were told by FE that our flights would be paid to the airlines 75 days out which would have been last week. Now they have apparently changed their policy, They will not explain why this all changed.

 

HAL and FE have my full payment and their reluctance to pay for our flights seems to be ridiculous and just very poor customer service.

[kazu]

2 hours ago, Vict0riann said:

@terrydtx, that's really interesting.  We had been told, a few years ago, that we couldn't use FE if we had too much time before the cruise, and as we usually spend some time somewhere in Europe, before a cruise back to the US, or vice versa, we have always only booked one end of the journey with FE.  But you're been "allowed" to book 18 days before your cruise.  I guess one reason not to do that is the problem you're having now.

 

FYI - I have used Flight Ease in the past and could book early pre-cruise and later post cruise ( I think 1 month is the limit but I’m not sure - my max was 2 weeks).  My sisters are using it for the upcoming cruise and they are staying a week before.

 

their flights have been upended but it’s not because of Flight Ease - it’s due to Air Canada shuffling flight.  Mine is fixed (I used points) but they will need to call Flight Ease to do so.  After reading posts here I suggested that they wait a week at least before calling.

All the airlines are changing flights right left and centre.  I”m trying to remember to check all of mine on a regular basis to stay one step ahead of the game.

 

[mr. godfredo]

On 6/2/2022 at 9:28 AM, silversneakers said:

I think IF you book business or first class you can book your seats but not main cabin seats. I only  know this because I had main cabin, then rebooked to business class and it was at that point that I could book my seats.  I then changed back to main cabin but was not able to book seats once again.

Not the case. I booked main cabin and requested early ticketing and was able to book seats on my flight on KLM instantly once I had my confirmation number. It all depends on the airline policy as well as the fare code the flight is booked with. 

[dobiemom]

On 6/2/2022 at 9:28 AM, silversneakers said:

I think IF you book business or first class you can book your seats but not main cabin seats. I only  know this because I had main cabin, then rebooked to business class and it was at that point that I could book my seats.  I then changed back to main cabin but was not able to book seats once again.

Not necessarily. I’m on AA operated by BA. I’m in business/first class. I canNOT choose free seats. I can pay for them if I like. Free seats will be available at check in, 24 hours prior.