Had a bit of a scare yesterday. I went to check in for my Airberlin flight TXL-HEL (that was to connect to Finnair HEL-JFK) to end my Eurotrip 2014.

I booked the one way award flight on aa.com and up until I went to check in the day before the flights, it showed up in the “My Trips” section of aa.com.

Trouble in Euroland

When I logged in, it said “No upcoming trips” so I typed in the confirmation number and it found the reso after a few heart palpitations, thank gods. But the flights were wrong.

Instead of Airberlin TXL-HEL and Finnair HEL-JFK, I just saw only an Airberlin flight TXL-JFK. NOOOOO!!!

I pulled up the email from when I booked and made sure I had a ticket number. I did.

Then I typed in the confirmation code into airberlin.com. It errored out a few times. I Googled “Airberlin check in” and no less than four different check in pages came up. One of them found the flights AA was talking about, and I was able to assign myself a seat and got a boarding pass with a different ticket number (!). The confirmation code was also different on airberlin.com – which is normal – but I’d just never seen it before.

A few things:

• I really wanted to take that Finnair flight and try out their business class product for myself, which I heard was good
• I really did NOT want to take Airberlin all the way home
• This was the second time this trip I had an unannounced product change
• American did not notify me via text, email, phone call, or otherwise. I had to untangle all this 24 hours before when I went to check in for the flight
• I arrived at the airport not knowing if I really had a ticket or not. I trust Airberlin about as much as I trust Air France or Alitalia (which is not at all)

Bottom line

Overall, just very very uncool. I redeemed my hard-earned miles for a specific product and for a specific flight. To have it taken away at the last minute with no notice is not something I want to get used to from airlines, and especially American. I really wanted that Finnair flight and now I’m up the creek with no paddle and have to settle with Airberlin, which I’ve heard has an inferior product.

I kinda want American to give me my miles back. Has anyone else had any trouble with unannounced changes to routes, product, or airlines lately? Hopefully this doesn’t become a trend.

Consider this a reminder to always double- and triple-check your flight bookings!

So now, look forward to my Airberlin business class review soon. Be better good. #grumpy

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