Another fairly significant “Schedule Change Saturday” arrived for some Delta Air Lines passengers this weekend.
What Can Happen During a Schedule Change?
Here is what might change during Schedule Change Saturdays:
- Flight departure days
- Though, this is fairly uncommon
- Flight departure and arrival times
- Aircraft
- Seat assignments
- That great seat you picked might not be there anymore
I know people who diligently check their flight reservations each week to ensure they’re on top of any changes made and then amend whatever needs fixing. (More on that in a minute.)
I also know people who book flights and don’t look at them until a couple of days before their trip — only to discover surprises that throw everything into chaos and panic.
To Delta’s credit, the airline has improved its alerting of passengers about schedule changes. But it’s still important to monitor your itineraries.
How I’ve Used the Schedule Change to My Advantage
You can use opportunities like this to change departing and arriving airports when you’re in markets with multiple airports. For example, I’ve had return flights home scheduled to arrive at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on busy weekend nights. I used schedule change opportunities to switch to the significantly less hell-ish and (closer to my house) Hollywood-Burbank Airport (BUR). I went into the Fly Delta app, selected “Change My Flight” (or whatever it is), and found a trip home to Burbank. I changed to that for no additional fee.
But if you live in, say, New York, you could change from JFK to LaGuardia and vice versa. Chicagoans: switch from O’Hare to Midway (if that’s more convenient).
You get the point.
You might be able to change your departure and arrival dates to your advantage.
Final Approach
Airline schedules are always subject to change. Saturday is generally when Delta’s schedule changes come down. Make sure to keep an eye on your itineraries — and use the schedule changes to your advantage when possible!
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Yesterday I had a flight from LaGuardia that was canceled when I checked first thing in the morning (5 AM). Flight from origin to LaGuardia was fine which my girlfriend and I were supposed to be on at 7 AM.
As this was a companion ticket flight, I ended up calling Delta and they got us an alternate flight to a different airport (and going through Atlanta, which I prefer over LaGuardia). Otherwise we would have been flying today and only would have had a day to visit family instead of 2.
Glad I’m diligent about checking flights otherwise we would have been screwed out of money and time.
Congratulations on making that work to your benefit.
Was able to switch to perfect flights – thanks Chris!
Our regional flights from ATL gave all been pushed up by 2 hours on Saturdays which doesn’t work when we need those 9:30pm flights. Now the inbound flights are 3:30p and 7:30p which is crazy. Only on Saturdays. Somebody is crazy.
My return flight(7:30 PM) to Jax from Atl for a December flight was cancelled and we were put on 10:30 PM flight getting us in very late… There are no other flights to choose.Bummer