SAS Canceled My Flight, I Pushed The Wrong Button, Now I’m Out Of Luck

All the time, OMAAT readers will share with me the frustrating situations they encounter with airlines, and I try to share my take and provide tips, best I can. Well, I’ve just encountered a situation with a ticket I had booked on Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), which is leaving me very frustrated.

I guess I should take responsibility here, though it really exposes how one-sided airline contracts of carriage are, and how unforgiving airlines are when it comes to applying logic to these kinds of situations. Let me explain…

SAS canceled my flight, and rebooking wasn’t seamless

On the trip I’m just wrapping up, I flew Emirates’ 777 business class from Dubai (DXB) to Frankfurt (FRA), and my plan was then to connect to Copenhagen (CPH) four hours later, on an SAS A320neo business class flight, which I booked with cash (I paid around $300).

While standing in the gate area at Dubai Airport at around 2AM waiting to board, I received an email from SAS, informing me that my flight several hours later from Frankfurt to Copenhagen had been canceled. Grrr! Can I just mention that I have really bad luck, because the last intra-Europe flight I had booked (from a couple of months back) was also canceled on the day of departure?

The email indicated I should check my options by going to the “my trips” section of SAS’ website, so that’s exactly what I did.

Annoying, despite SAS’ email indicating I could rebook through the website, that wasn’t initially the case, as obviously things weren’t programmed correctly. After pulling up my itinerary, I just saw the standard rebooking options, not reflecting that my flight was canceled:

• I was given the option for a same day flight change, at the cost of 60 EUR
• The option to rebook flights showed as “not available”

While I was initially booked on an 11:05AM flight, I knew there was no earlier flight on SAS, and the next flight was only at 3:15PM. For context, I had only one night in Copenhagen, and was staying at Nimb Hotel, the city’s best hotel, which I booked with a Hilton free night certificate.

So it was important to me to get there ASAP, and I was a little worried the later flight would book out with people rebooking, given that it was operated by a smaller regional jet.

Since I was literally in the boarding area for a flight in the UAE (which also blocks most voice calling apps), all I could do was keep refreshing the SAS “my trips” section, to see if options finally showed up. Well, that didn’t happen for quite some time.

After my flight was airborne, around an hour after I initially checked, I saw the proposed alternative flight, which was the 3:15PM flight I was expecting. That was one of the options, or I could request a refund.

The details on this page were all limited, so I clicked through to confirm the flight. After all, I wasn’t even sure if the rebooking was in business class, since it wasn’t mentioned on the page. For that matter, I wondered if it would even rebook correctly, given previous issues I was having with managing the reservation (with rebooking options not showing up).

Sure enough, the flight confirmed, and it was in business class.

I then decided I was going to look for a better option

As soon as I knew what my “confirmed” option was with SAS, I started considering alternatives. As much as I loved the idea of taking the later flight and getting 250 EUR compensation thanks to EC261 regulations, this was less than ideal:

• I’d realistically only get to the hotel at around 6PM, well after sunset, and I really wanted to enjoy and review Nimb Hotel, and my time there was limited
• I had been traveling nonstop for three days with minimal sleep, and quite frankly, sitting in Frankfurt Airport for another eight hours sounded really unpleasant

I took a look at options (which isn’t all that easy on Emirates’ very slow inflight Wi-Fi), and saw that Lufthansa had a nonstop flight at around 10AM that had award availability in economy, so I could book that for 7,500 points. As much as I would’ve preferred business class and EC261 compensation, this seemed worth it to enjoy the hotel, to get some proper rest, and to avoid an extra five plus hours in Frankfurt.

I then decided to start an online chat with SAS to try to cancel my original flight. However, despite what the website says, the online chat doesn’t actually transfer you to a human, and is just AI (at least it was when I reached out). So instead, I called SAS the second I landed in Frankfurt.

I explained my flight was canceled, and I would like to refund it, as the schedule for the new flight didn’t work for me, and I rebooked a separate itinerary. The agent explained that my ticket was non-refundable, because I had accepted the new flight.

Okay, as she said that, I kind of thought to myself “oh boy, this is going to be a headache.” Technically she’s correct — I did “accept” the new flight, but that’s because the website wasn’t working correctly previously with rebooking, and I wanted to see what the option actually was, in terms of the cabin travel would be in, etc.

She explained that SAS had no further obligation, since I accepted the rebooking, and therefore a cancellation was no longer possible. She insisted there was nothing else she could do. Okay, that’s super annoying — I suppose technically she’s correct that I accepted the alternative, though this just strikes me as incredibly customer unfriendly.

I’m a SkyTeam Elite Plus member booking business class who had a flight canceled on me last minute. The website was bad for rebooking, and I just wanted to see what the alternative option actually was, in full. And then when I reached out almost immediately to explain I didn’t want to take that flight, I was essentially told “tough luck,” because I agreed to the alternative. Grrrr!

Do I just take the loss on this, or try to fight it?

I try to hold myself to a high standard when it comes to how I interact with airlines, and I also know to expect the worst when it comes to airline customer service, and their willingness to apply logic to a situation.

In retrospect, I should’ve probably known better than to confirm the flight, only to then cancel. It was probably a combination of factors — I was super tired, I placed a lot of value in being sure I could get to Copenhagen as soon as possible, and the website was having issues with confirming new flights.

However, I will say, I’ve absolutely had other situations where my flight was canceled, I accepted a rebooking, and then I let the airline know that actually didn’t work, and they were happy to refund me. This just seems like one of those situations where if you step back and apply any sort of logic, you’d say “okay, refunding the customer is the right thing.” But I also understand that the airline industry operates under a system of “computer says no.”

Perhaps the other path here is to try to request EC261 compensation, based on the flight I was rebooked on. Okay, I don’t get my money back, but the 250 EUR would basically cover the ticket cost, and they could only get me to my destination over three hours late. But then I’m sure they’d also argue that I didn’t take the flight…

So yeah, I’m not sure what exactly to make of this, but this is one of the more frustrating situations I’ve had with an airline in quite some time… and maybe I’m just mad at myself here.

Bottom line

SAS canceled my flight at the last minute, which was less than ideal, given that I had just one night in Copenhagen. The rebooking process was far from seamless, but eventually I was able to see what the rebooking option was, and it confirmed.

After looking at alternatives on other airlines and deciding that the flight didn’t work for me, I just booked a ticket on Lufthansa with points, since I valued getting to Copenhagen earlier. However, at that point SAS claimed that I wasn’t eligible for a refund, since I agreed to the rebooking. That’s kind of frustrating, when you consider the consider the big picture, in my opinion.

What do you make of this SAS cancellation saga?