Flight delay will cause missed connections - what to do?

Question

This is somewhat more than the title lets on. I am currently in Mexico City. I have a flight from Cancun to get to Santa Marta, Colombia, with connections in San Salvador and Bogota on Avianca. Separately, I have a flight booked on Volaris to get from Mexico City to Cancun.

Yesterday I got a Google alert saying the flight from Cancun to San Salvador was delayed by 6 hours. I called Avianca, thinking that since I'm in Mexico City, there may be better options to get to Santa Marta instead of missing the connection in San Salvador and having to spend the night there. The Avianca rep I spoke to told me that they didn't know anything about the delay (even though it was listed on their website's Flight Status page). They said they would send me an email if anything changed. So, this morning, I get an email saying that flight is delayed. I'm already checked in to my Volaris flight, so my luggage is going to Cancun (and by the time I get any replies to this, I will be too).

Looking at Avianca's flight schedule, even if they put me on the first flight direct from Cancun to Bogota, and the last flight from Bogota to Santa Marta, I would only have a 24 min connection time in Bogota - not a lot of buffer. If they had acknowledged yesterday that the first leg of my flight was going to be delayed, I'm sure I could have gotten on a Mexico City to Bogota flight without any issues. This is extremely frustrating. What are my options / what is my recourse?

Answer 1

:( At this point, I think your decision is where you would prefer to be stranded, San Salvador or Bogota.

Given your description, seems Bogota would be best since it is possible you can make the Santa Marta flight, especially if it's delayed as well and at least Bogota is closer to Santa Marta.

You can also ask for different routings.

For the future, if you don't like what one Agent is saying, call back.

Answer 2

This is unfortunately standard practice in the industry. Delays are usually not acknowledged until the last minute and the sometimes hope that they will get shorter, so they don't want to tell people to not show up until much later, just in case. In very few cases I've managed to ge the airline to change my route to something better free of charge but that is less hand a handful of times.

What you should do now is follow the route they gave you. If you make the connection, great. If not, they will reroute you again. Depending on how late you arrive compared to the original plan, you may get compensation but only after you arrived, had time to file a claim and hear back. This takes long, just last month I got compensation for a situation where I was rerouted on flights that arrived over 24h after my original arrival date.

Given the delay, some credit cards offer some insurance, if you have bought the tickets with such a card but that really depends. If you do have one, it's time to read the fine-print to see if some coverage applies to your situation.