Too often, even with their flight itinerary in hand,
travelers expect things to go just as that piece of paper
states, knowing, however, that bad weather or a
mechanical problem may cause a delay. But that's not
enough if you're traveling in Third World countries,
especially in and out of small airports.
If you haven't confirmed your itinerary long
before your flights are scheduled to depart -- at least
a couple of times -- you could be in for a big surprise,
as I was once while traveling to Papua New Guinea.
Certainly, an airline should inform you of a cancellation,
and when it doesn't, you may suffer the consequences,
as subscriber Carol Cox (Mexico Beach, FL)
found out. She wrote to share her story.
"I just returned from 28 days in Indonesia and
want to tell you about a problem we had with Garuda
Indonesia, which is leaving many travelers scrambling
for flights at the last minute.
"On March 20th, we four travelers showed up at
the Sorong airport to catch a flight to Ambon, only to
learn the flight had been canceled two months prior. None of us had been notified. I don't know if it was
the fault of Nusatrip, whom we booked through, or
Garuda. The airline acknowledged it had not notified
us, and a customer rep in Sorong provided us with a
hotel and meals after some additional negotiations,
then booked us on a Sriwijaya flight the next day.
"We learned this wasn't an isolated case. Another
passenger taking the same flight from Sorong to
Ambon on another day found out four days before
her trip that her flight had been canceled two months
earlier. And a couple of Aussies flying from Lembeh
to Ambon learned three days before their flight that it
had been canceled at least a month earlier. All these
trips were booked through various travel agents, and
the passengers were not notified in a timely manner.
Our host at Dive Into Ambon said a lot of flights had
been canceled."
So, bottom line: Confirm all your flights a week
before you leave home, then confirm again a couple
days before each one is scheduled to depart.