We got off to an early start. Yay!
Well, let me back up. Yesterday, American Airlines contacted us, asking if we'd be willing to switch our first flight to Dallas slightly later in the day. Sure, why not? We'd still have 1 1/2 hours layover in Dallas before heading to Paris. We got the house totally ready, packed up the car, and got to the airport with lots of time to spare.
OF COURSE, what did we learn soon after checking in? Our flight to Dallas was delayed by several hours, and we will miss the connecting flight to Paris. American only runs one flight per day to France, total, so we will have to stay overnight in Dallas at a hotel.
But...then we also have to change our tickets from Paris to Nice. (Remember how American refused to help us get to Nice, even though we had booked tickets from them? So we had to buy new tickets via Air France?) Our tickets clearly say that there is no fee to change the tickets for similar or higher-priced tickets. But...when we tried to change them to the day after, we are being charged anywhere between $525 and $1,200 to change them.
This makes our THIRD set of tickets we've been forced to buy to get to Nice.
I get it--airlines are in upheaval due to the pandemic. But this is ridiculous. I broke down and started crying when I was talking to the gate agent. All he could say is "There's nothing we can do." And yeah, I feel bad for being the obnoxious customer but I just can't handle having to buy tickets so many times over.
Also, we are missing this flight and bearing the costs of rebooking because we were doing American Airlines a favor by agreeing to change our first flight, even though we didn't need to or weren't obliged to. We helped American, and they did nothing in return.
And we also have to get our exemption certificates from the French consulate changed every time we adjust our itinerary.
So for now, we're in airport purgatory until late Friday night at the earliest.
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