How to fix a schedule change misconnection via Virgin Atlantic / Air France

Last summer, I wrote about booking eight seats in business class on Air France using Virgin Atlantic points (booked via the chat feature on the Virgin Atlantic website). I was pretty stoked to grab seats almost a year in advance for my immediate family and four other family members on an itinerary that worked perfectly for a trip to Europe. Unfortunately, in the time since, Air France has had a schedule change that broke my itinerary. Solving that problem required more effort and stress than I expected. I book a lot of award travel every year without issue, but this is a good reminder of the perils of partner award travel — and the power of persistence in picking up the pieces.

The bottom line up front: How I fixed a broken schedule-changed Air France itinerary booked via Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

The shortest version of the story is that I booked Air France flights through Virgin Atlantic using my Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points and Air France later schedule-changed part of the itinerary, causing a misconnection. I initially contacted Virgin Atlantic and they couldn’t help me fix the now-broken itinerary. As it turns out, I had to contact Air France to ask them to sell in a reprotection flight (i.e. tentatively save a new flight on my itinerary) so that Virgin Atlantic could reissue my ticket.

For some, that much will be obvious and intuitive, but for many it will not be. It was neither obvious nor intuitive for me and I did not come to that solution as quickly as that paragraph makes it sound. Instead, this was an ongoing frustration with both sides pointing fingers at each other suggesting that the other was responsible to fix it. Hopefully, after reading this post, it will cost you less time and cause you less stress to get your itinerary fixed should you ever run into the same situation.

The chaos of a schedule change

Again, the gist of the problem here is that Air France had a schedule change that would cause us to miss our connection, which broke our itinerary. Getting that fixed wasn’t as easy as it should have been.

Backing up to the beginning of the story, I had originally booked 8 passengers from New York to Paris to Milan for travel in business class on Air France using my Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points. At the time when I made the booking, the agent couldn’t put eight passengers under one PNR and had to split us into two separate PNRs: One PNR has 5 passengers and the other has 3 passengers.

The original itinerary looked like this:

• Friday, 5/23/25: Depart New York JFK at 11:30pm
• Saturday, 5/24/25: Arrive Paris CDG at 1:00pm
• Saturday, 5/24/25: Depart Paris CDG at 3:20pm
• Saturday, 5/24/25: Arrive Milan MXP at 4:50pm

However, the leg from Paris-CDG to Milan-MXP had a schedule change. It now departs at 12:25pm, so the itinerary looked like this:

• Friday, 5/23/25: Depart New York JFK at 11:30pm
• Saturday, 5/24/25: Arrive Paris CDG at 1:00pm
• Saturday, 5/24/25: Depart Paris CDG at 12:25pm
• Saturday, 5/24/25: Arrive Milan MXP at 1:55pm

If you’re good with a clock, you’ll realize that we can’t make a connection that takes off before we arrive in Paris.

I only noticed this change while pulling up my booking to double check seat selections a few months ago. I had not received any notification of a schedule change. I am glad that I pulled up the booking to check our seat selections and that I paid close enough attention to notice the problem or I imagine I would have been in for quite a headache at the airport.

Multiple calls with mixed explanations as to Virgin Atlantic’s inability to help

Given that Air France has multiple flights per day from Paris to Milan, I expected that this would be a relatively easy fix. I was wrong.

I called Virgin Atlantic a number of times and had a handful of different explanations as to why Virgin Atlantic couldn’t help me. The most popular explanation was that Virgin Atlantic could only rebook me if there was alternative award availability for the entire journey. Much to nobody’s surprise, there wasn’t availability on other flights for eight seats in business class from New York to Milan.

That said, I did find availability for eight passengers on a much later flight from Paris to Milan the same day and on a flight the next morning that departed within 24 hours of arrival in Paris. Both had availability for 8 seats to be booked through Virgin Atlantic, but phone agents were unable to change just that segment of the booking despite those Paris-to-Milan legs being available to book separately on the Virgin Atlantic website. Agents told me that this availability was phantom, but Greg used existing miles to see if it was actually bookable, and it was — seats on that leg alone ticketed just fine (he booked and then cancelled just to test it for me). Virgin Atlantic still said that they couldn’t put those flights together with our existing outbound from New York to Paris.

Pushing a bit further, I asked if there was a way that Virgin Atlantic could contact Air France to ask them to open space on another connecting flight or to get us on an earlier outbound from New York, Newark, or Boston. After some prodding about whether there was some sort of partner liaison to handle this sort of thing, a few agents put me on hold to call Air France and ask Air France to fix it. Each time, I was told that Air France said that there was nothing they could do. Virgin Atlantic offered to look for alternative dates or refund the trip. Since we had hotels, a cruise, and return flights from Europe all booked, cancelling or changing dates wasn’t an option (and even if we could travel a day or two sooner or later, there hadn’t been any availability in business class for 3 passengers never mind all eight of us).

A couple of agents told me that there was an Air France email contact they could ask for assistance and they supposedly sent a message and said that I would hear back from Virgin Atlantic with options. I didn’t.

Each Virgin Atlantic phone agent told me that I could call Air France and ask them if they could do something to help. While it was suggested several times that I could call Air France, each time it sounded like the Virgin Atlantic agent was simply punting it to Air France to try to do something. I was sure that if I called Air France, they would tell me that this is a Virgin Atlantic ticket (since I booked through Virgin Atlantic Flying Club) and that I should contact Virgin Atlantic for their help.

In the meantime, I inquired with an Air France contact as to whether Virgin Atlantic and Air France have some sort of partner liaison desk. From past experience, I know that airlines sometimes have departments that interface in situations like this. I was advised that they do not have an arrangement like that. Back to the drawing board.

Virgin Atlantic finally notifies me of the schedule change 11 days before departure

Finally, 11 days prior to departure, I received an email from Virgin Atlantic with the subject line “Re; Important information about your flight”. This was the first notification I received of the schedule change:

Dear Nicholas

We’re sorry to have to let you know that your flight AF9 has been changed causing a mis-connection.

There are several options available to you, so we need you to tell us what action you would like us to take with your booking, by clicking here.

We know how important your trip will be to you and apologise for any disappointment or inconvenience that may be caused by this change.

If some of your flights are still operating (including connecting flights) please contact us to amend the flights that are still operating.

Kind regards

I am glad that Virgin Atlantic finally contacted me about the misconnection, but unfortunately the email was less helpful than it sounds. The “tell us what action you would like to take” link just goes to a generic page explaining changes and refunds.

Before contacting Virgin Atlantic again, I figured that I should give Air France a shot to see if they would help me.

Air France chat tells me to contact Virgin Atlantic

Due to the schedule change, under EU261 regulations, I believe that the operating airline has to offer a choice between an alternative itinerary or a refund. I’ve not gone through the EU261 claims process myself (Tim has and he wrote about it here), but my understanding is that it was on the operating airline to notify me of the schedule change (they hadn’t until the email from Virgin Atlantic less than two weeks prior to departure) and to figure out alternative options.

Before attempting to call Air France, I poked around the Air France website and after clicking around on the contact us pages, I noticed a chat bubble in the bottom right corner of the page. I don’t know whether I needed to be logged in to see this icon, but I replicated it again while writing this post.

I figured that it might actually be beneficial to chat in order to have a written record of the interaction, though I expected Air France to tell me to pound sand as soon as they saw that this was a Virgin Atlantic ticket.

Sure enough, that’s more or less how things began. After providing my confirmation number, the Air France agent said that this ticket was issued on Virgin Atlantic ticket stock and that I should contact Virgin Atlantic for assistance because Air France had no control over the ticket and couldn’t make changes.

I pushed back citing EU261 and the obligation to offer me an alternate routing due to Air France’s schedule change. If my read of the European Union website is correct, my schedule-changed Air France flight from Paris to Milan qualifies as “cancelled”:

Cancellation occurs when:

• your original flight schedule is abandoned, and you are transferred to another scheduled flight
• the departure time of your flight is brought forward by more than 1 hour

The same is addressed in the Frequently Asked Questions:

The airline changed the departure time and my flight now leaves earlier than originally scheduled. What can I do?

A flight which has been brought forward by more than one hour is considered a cancelled flight. You have the same rights as in case of a flight cancellation.

At any rate, my understanding of the regulation is that Air France was responsible for offering an alternative routing.

The Air France chat representative’s tone changed a bit after I cited EU261:

Air France will be responsible for handling any compensation requests, and you can submit a claim through the Air France website. However, for assistance with managing ticket changes, since the booking was made and paid through Virgin Atlantic and issued under their reservation ID and ticket number, any modifications must be handled by them, as we do not have full control over this part of the ticket.

Please note that we are not closing the possibility of transferring the benefit to your next flight. However, in order to do so, the request must be managed by Virgin Atlantic from their end.

My read there was that Air France was saying that they weren’t telling me that it was impossible to end up on the next flight, just that the request had to be managed through Virgin Atlantic.

Another shot with Virgin Atlantic yields the terminology I needed

I next hopped on chat with Virgin Atlantic, first heading to this page and finding the red “Need help? Chat to us” button in the bottom right corner.

Again, I decided to try chat rather than phone in order to have a written record of the conversation.

Predictably, the agent I reached told me that there was no alternative award availability and said that Virgin Atlantic could only rebook me on another available award flight, but they couldn’t help me get on a different Air France flight that wasn’t available as an award. They suggested again that I contact Air France.

I explained that I had contacted Air France and that they had advised me that they couldn’t make any changes since the ticket was on Virgin Atlantic ticket stock and had told me to contact Virgin Atlantic.

That was apparently what I had to say in order to get the helpful piece of advice that I needed from the start. The Virgin Atlantic agent responded with this:

We don’t need them to make the change we just need them to sell in a reprotection flight so we can reissue the ticket for you, with Reward bookings we can only issue the ticket if Reward seats are available, you need to ask Air France to sell in the best reprotection option they have for you that you can agree on with them as they are responsible for reprotection as it’s there flight that has bene changed, once they sell the flight in we can them reissue the ticket for you.

What Air France are saying to you is correct, but we just need them to sell in the reward seats in to your bookings so we can reissue the tickets for you. If they don’t sell the required flight in to your booking we cant reissue the ticket.

Ah-ha! This was the information I needed. Rather than simply “Contact Air France and ask them to help”, I needed the right terminology — that Air France needed to “sell in the best reprotection option” so that Virgin Atlantic could reissue the tickets.

This all quickly becomes a matter of semantics: Air France can’t change the ticket, but they can “sell in a reprotection flight” so that Virgin can “change” the ticket. In plain English, this means that Air France had to do something on their side to say “it’s OK if you change them to flight X” and then Virgin Atlantic puts a stamp of approval on it, reissuing the ticket.

This time, when I went back to Air France and copied what Virgin Atlantic told me about selling in a reprotection flight, the Air France agent immediately knew what to do.

Hi Nicholas. Thank you for being one of our Flying Blue members. I’ll be glad to assist you on checking for alternative flights. Once I have saved the new flight on your booking, you would have to contact Virgin Atlantic for the reissuance for the ticket.

At this point, I had expected that Air France would offer us one of two later departures from Paris to Milan on Saturday evening or one on Sunday morning, none of which had 8 seats available in business class. I was going to suggest that putting us in economy on that leg from Paris to Milan would be fine since intra-European business class is really just an economy class seat with the middle seat blocked.

However, before I had a chance to offer to accept an economy leg, the agent came back with an offer to put us on a 6:30pm departure flight from New York (rather than the 11:30pm flight we had booked), which would put us in Paris in time to catch the newly-rescheduled flight to Milan at 12:25pm the next day, keeping us in business class the entire way.

As it turned out, that flight only had 5 available seats, but they were able to get the other 3 passengers on another departure an hour earlier so that we would all arrive in Milan at the same time.

Within just a few minutes, the Air France agent had saved the new flights in the booking. I could immediately see the new itinerary in my Air France app.

Shortly thereafter, I got back on chat with Virgin Atlantic. Amazingly, I got connected to the same chat representative who had told me that Air France would have to sell in the reprotection flight. I explained that Air France had done their part and that I needed Virgin Atlantic to reissue the tickets. Within just a few minutes, the representative had pushed everything through.

It was actually several hours before I received new email confirmations of the ticket reissuance, but it did happen later that night.

I thanked that agent pretty profusely for giving me the right terminology to get the help I needed. He said that he could see from the notes on the booking that I’d reached out several times and that this should have been more easily solvable from the start. I didn’t disagree once I knew how easy it was to get it fixed.

Do I have an EU261 compensation claim?

I cited EU261 in pushing back for help from Air France (and with Virgin Atlantic) because my understanding is that since I am flying an EU carrier between the US and the European Union, the operating carrier is responsible to offer my choice of reimbursement or re-routing. However, I’m legitimately not sure whether or not I would have a compensation claim here. This isn’t a primary concern for me, but I imagine some readers would ask and I don’t really know the answer.

Had the airline notified me more than 14 days prior to departure, I wouldn’t be due compensation. The first notice I received about the schedule change was less than 14 days prior to departure.

Since my arrival in Milan will not be delayed (rather we will arrive a bit earlier than planned), I wouldn’t be due compensation for a delay.

However, since the schedule-changed segment from Paris to Milan leaves more than 2 hours earlier than originally scheduled (and since our outbound from New York now departs more than 2 hours earlier than originally scheduled), maybe this does qualify for cancellation compensation?

Does it make a difference if I was not informed more than 14 days prior to departure but I happened to notice it more than 14 days in advance?

I don’t really know. I’ll probably follow up with Air France just to understand the process and what is or is not due.

Bottom line

The bottom line is that if you book an award for travel on Air France using partner miles and a schedule change breaks your itinerary, you need to call Air France to put a reprotection flight into your itinerary so that Virgin Atlantic can reticket it. I think it makes a lot of sense to do this via chat both to avoid wasting time on hold and to have a written record of the conversations.

On a broader scale, this experience gave me more sympathy for those who are newer to award travel. Neither side was proactively helpful here and as departure neared, I began stressing out a bit that we didn’t have a way to get to Milan. I could only imagine the stress for someone less familiar with award travel / confident that things would work out. I was very close to asking Virgin if they could keep the flight to France and cut off the connection, intending to book 8 last-minute cash tickets from Paris to Milan at significant expense. I’m glad that past experience gave me confidence that this would work out with proper persistence. Hopefully, if you run into this same issue in the future, it will require only a few minutes on chat to get this sorted out.

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