Icelandair plane ticket ordeal

I booked my tickets to London for the Mongol Rally on Icelandair. They were the cheapest flight and allowed me a stopover in Iceland. But now I know why they were the cheapest flight.

My initial flight had me flying from Dulles arriving at LaGuardia at 11:55AM and flying out of JFK at 2:05PM.

That is ridiculous.

There is no way that I would have made that second flight at JFK.

Two hours and ten minutes to get my bags from the domestic flight, get from LaGuardia to JFK, check my bags at the international terminal at JFK, go through security, and make my flight to Iceland.

No way.

I called Icelandair's "customer service" phone number.

The first "customer service" representative that I talked to blamed me for not seeing the "change of airports required" on the reservation. CHANGE AIRPORTS???

Here is the line that I was suppose to see on the entire reservation page.

It was smaller than this and this is small:

Change of airport required. Time between flights = 2:10.

Don't confuse it with:

Change of plane required. Time between flights = 4:35.

The "customer service" representative told me that I should have read it before I confirmed the reservation.

Read to change airports???

What airline does that?

Apparently ICELANDAIR.

Apparently, according to the "customer service" representative the airline code states that that 2 hours is the minimum allowable time to get from airport to airport that an airline can make a booking with. Apparently, no one from Icelandair has ever tried to get from La Guardia to JFK with luggage. That is just crazy.

I told the first "customer service" representative that I would call back after she told me that she would hold my "options" for one hour and 30 minutes.

She gave me two options: (1) take an earlier flight or (2) take a later flight.

Option (1): Take an earlier flight that STILL flew into into LaGuardia. If I took that option, I would STILL have to make my way to JFK in NY traffic AND pay an additional cost of a taxi or shuttle.
Option (2): Take a later flight and arrive the next day in Iceland. This is after I just made non-cancel-able hotel reservations for the night of July 18th. If I took that option I would have to pay for a hotel night where I did not stay at the hotel at $125 a night and they would probably cancel my hotel reservation when I didn't show up until the next morning, so I would also pay a cancellation fee.

I hung up the phone called my sister and my father to vent my frustration. I was mad at myself for not reading the fine print AND I was mad at Icelandair for creating a booking with such stupid connecting flights and then calling it policy.

When I called back after a few minutes, another "customer service" representative could sense that I was not happy.

I asked what would happen if I cancelled the flight from Dulles to La Guardia and made another flight from Reagan National or Dulles to JFK with another airline. The "customer service" representative said I could not partially cancel a ticket. I could FULLY cancel a ticket, but then I would only get a refund of half the ticket price. HECK NO!

She asked me what I wanted to do.

I told her what I wanted to do was fly from DC to Iceland without having to change airports. I would be willing to fly from DC to JFK and then fly out of JFK, but I didn't want to fly from DC to La Guardi, then CHANGE AIRPORTS and fly out of JFK to Iceland.

After putting me on hold for what seemed like a long time, the "customer service" respresntative can back with an earlier flight that left Dules and flies into JFK with JetBlue, then flies Icelandair (I guess) to Iceland. The whole problem appears to dela with the use of multiple domestic airlines by Icelandair that fly to different airports.

You would think they could find a flight that flew from DC (either regan National or Dulles) to JFK. There are probably a hundred flights a day that fly that route.

Finally, this "customer service" representative changed it so that I am now going through to JFK. Dulles to JFK, JFK to Reykjavik, Reykjavik to London. With a three night stopover in Reykjavik.

All is OK now but I was livid.

So before you leave this blog post, don't forget to read this on the page, it is very important:

Change of airport required. Time between flights = 2:10.

What it should have been on the page was:

Change of airport required. Time between flights = 2:10.
YEAH, WE SAID AIRPORT!!!