TripIt subscription paid for itself this week

[significance]

I’m just back from a trip to Ecuador. We booked the LATAM-operated flights through Qantas (Qantas codeshare on the longest legs). We were scheduled to leave Guayaquil for Santiago, Chile at 1445 on Wednesday afternoon, but at 0930 I received an alert from TripIt that our flight had been cancelled. Checking the Qantas app, it seemed to suggest that we had been rebooked on Guayaquil to Lima, Peru and then Lima to Santiago flights, departing 1255 — but there’d been no notification about this from either Qantas or LATAM. With LATAM recommending being at the airport 3 hours before the flight, we had to immediately check out from our hotel and hustle over to the airport. LATAM staff said our flight had indeed been cancelled but we hadn’t been rebooked. For some reason, it took three LATAM staff nearly an hour to work out how to book us onto the alternative flights. By that time the Qantas app was no longer showing the Lima route, but simply telling us that the flight had been cancelled and we should refer to communications from Qantas for the next steps — but there’d still been no direct communication from Qantas, by email, text or phone.

Happily, we did get onto the new route and made it to our Santiago to Sydney flight in time. I’ve kept up my TripIt subscription for years, but this has been the most dramatic time that it has paid for itself. Without that, we’d have missed the alternate flight and might have been stuck in Guayaquil for a day or more until we could be rebooked, and would have lost our seat selections and flown home late in middle seats to boot.

(Also: classic rewards upgrade request unsuccessful on both Sydney-Santiago and Santiago-Sydney legs. QFF Gold).