After stranding 31 students in Japan due to a ticketing snafu, American Airlines told them it would be happy to rebook them home…in 12 days. That forced them to get creative.
American Airlines Ticketing Snafu Strands 31 Students In Japan, Forcing An Intense Routing Back To Texas
I can only imagine the horror that spread across the face of Trevor Boffon when his group attempted to check-in for their flights home only to be told they had a reservation, but not ticket. Buffon took a group of 31 students from Carnegie Vanguard High School in Texas on a summer trip to Japan. The group was scheduled to fly back on JAL from Osaka to Tokyo then on American Airlines from Tokyo to Dallas to Houston. The ticket was booked via a travel agency but issued by American Airlines.
JAL blamed American Airlines. American blamed JAL. Both blamed the travel agent. The travel agent blamed both.
What. A. Mess.
American Airlines did take responsibility, which suggests it was responsible in the first place, but only offered them travel 12 days later. That sounds patently absurd, but may not be when you consider the large size of the group and how crowded flights have been this year.
As an aside, American Airlines offered no food or lodging during this delay…
The travel agent, EF Tours, went to work on a new itinerary, finally splitting up the group. Both took very circuitous routes home:
- All students flew to Bangkok
- After an overnight layover, half flew to Munich, then Charlotte, then Houston
- The other half flew to Paris to Dallas to Houston
Both groups arrived into Houston about 50 hours after leaving Osaka and 72 hours after they were originally supposed to arrive at home.
The teacher told about the predicament in a series of TikTok posts:
@official_dr_boffone I’ve been stranded in Japan for 48 hours with 31 students and teachers. We are finally able to go home but we have to fly around the world for 42 hours. Osaka > Bangkok > Munich > Charlotte > Houston. It’s gonna be an adventure, folks! #japantrip #japantravel #travelproblems #AmericanAirlines #eftours #japanairlines #aroundtheworld #aroundtheworldchallenge
@official_dr_boffone POV: You’ve been trying to get home from Osaka, Japan for 72 hours because American Airlines droppes the ball and now you’re in Bangkok, Thailand on a 9 hour layover #travelproblems #AmericanAirlines #eftours #travelnightmare #bangkok #onenightinbangkok #bangkokthailand
♬ One Night In Bangkok – Original Single Version / From “Chess” – Murray Head
@official_dr_boffone Replying to @Stephanie Goodman-Gelera American Airlines stranded me and 31 students and teachers on a school trip to Japan, sent us on a trip around the world, and now I’m trying a pretzel in Munich, Germany #americanairlines #eftours #travelnightmare #travelproblems #foodreview #tastetestpretzel #teacher #teachertok #teacherstorytime
@official_dr_boffone POV: You are traveling around the world and the only thing that brings you joy is Meryl Streep singing ABBA #americanairlines #eftours #travelnightmare #travelproblems #mammamia
@official_dr_boffone I finally made it back to Houston from Osaka. It over took 50 hours door-to-door. Thanks to everyone for following along and for your support! It’s been an adventure! #americanairlines #eftours #travelnightmare #travelproblems #aroundtheworld #aroundtheworldchallenge #japanairlines #teacher #teachersoftiktok #teachertok #teacherstorytime
I can only imagine how exhausting the trip home must have been…
Just my 2 cents, EF tours is not a mom and pop travel agency. They are very well known across the world and have been in the business of managing trips for students all over the place for over 50 years. They are the real deal when it comes to booking educational trips so I would assume they were not the ones that messed up.
Large agencies like EF tend to have a large staff, some of which are inexperienced. EF seems to have a lot of turnover which means they have some inexperienced and/or new staff. They definitely have some staff in all departments that are great and some that are completely incompetent.
Having utilized EF for several student groups, the details of this story actually lead me to believe that EF is at fault here. EF first creates a flight reservation for their groups and then later pay and ticket these flights. If you dig into the flight information that EF initially send the group leaders, you can find that you are able to see the record and the flights but the flights aren’t actually ticketed and paid until much closer to the trip. This has been the case for every trip I’ve led with them (the exception being on one of those trips they booked and ticketed two of my students on a separate record which was ticketed at the time I received it). This is not something a novice traveler would even notice if looking at the record through the airline site.
I cannot explain the inner working of how or why they are able and allowed to do this but this seems to be a part of their group pricing/contracting with the airlines. EF actually admitted to me that they hadn’t yet paid for the flights the first time I took a group and noticed this on the airline’s website upon receiving my group’s flight information. For the group in this story, my guess is that someone at EF forgot to complete the booking process after they issued the record or did so too late which led to the reservation not being ticketed in time. Some cruise lines that offer air add ons use a similar process and I have on multiple occasions read reports of the booking not being paid/finalized by the cruise line’s air department and thus the customer believes they have a ticket but they don’t (the customer paid the cruise line). The details to those cases and this EF group seem very similar.
I do think that the airlines should & could make it much more obvious when a reservation is not yet ticketed.
These students were able to travel around the world while èven many well traveled Americans have never traveled completely around the world. Some my have flown to India via Europe and across the Pacific to Singapore or Thailand.
They should have found a way to see something in Munich or Paris.
I blame American as there seems to be some issues with these tickets I also had a lot of issues with a JAL ticket booked on AA Boston-Tokyo-Jarkarta and was went through the same AA saying its JAL and JAL saying its AA
Todays example of spoiled kids with parents who think money will solve their problems. Sending their kids away during summer vacation under the guise of “education” screams todays parenting. Why spend quality time with the kids when you can send them away to a country that still wants to pay us back for a war they started?
I know, we can’t blame the people of a country for what their leaders did. Except of course when we have people wishing for Russian airliners to crash….see yesterdays post for examples.
Then again look at the name of the school. Named after the guy who was partially responsible for the death of over 2200 due to his extravagant spending on his hunting club in PA.
“Sending their kids away during summer vacation under the guise of “education” screams todays parenting.”
It’s a 9 day trip, lead by school teachers? This sort of thing has been going on for at least 50 years. Is this really on your list of “problems in modern society”? Chaperoned summer high school trips?
I think most sane individuals understand that a school trip to Japan isn’t going to include a rigorous formal educational curriculum, but it’s certainly more educational than high-schoolers sitting around the suburbs of Houston playing video games and smoking weed.
100% agree. I did a high school trip (domestic) and it was fabulous and educational. Such a great way to learn.
What a bizarro reply. These trips have been going on as long as I can remember…including my high school trip to Italy and Greece with my Latin class which was both fun and very educational. And I am from a middle class family as were most of the kids on the trip.
“Then again look at the name of the school. Named after the guy who was partially responsible for the death of over 2200 due to his extravagant spending on his hunting club in PA.”
Anyone else get this reference? David McCullough wrote a very good book about it.
I would have flown my child home on my dime and fought about the money later.
He writes good books!
Do you have kids? Probably not, otherwise you would not say such BS.
When’s the last time you got some oxygen and touched grass, Davie?
Airline at fault for sure, but where were the parents?
I would’ve just booked my kids a new flight home on a different airline. Tons of flights from Tokyo to the US.
I was a chaperone for my godchild on an EF tour. I did it as a personal favor for her mother. There were no problems with the tour, but the teenagers were a headache.
First world crisis
Easy. Take shinkansen to Tokyo and get flight from there, or take overnight bus. Plenty of flights from Tokyo, I think AA even has a direct to DFW.
AA’s options for being responsible to them were completely unreasonable. While Osaka itself has been gutted over the years with flights to North America, there are options every darn 30 minutes all day to Tokyo from Osaka and then dozens of flights to multiple points in the US and Canada. I am having a really hard time believing they could not have split the group into two or three amongst the myriad of options at hand from NRT or HND. For the only solution to be via BKK and Europe is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.
Why do you call him a buffoon? That’s not very nice.
Sounds like my trip returning home from Okinawa. Somewhat of the same situation.
I posted on flyertalk but here you go.
So about a week and a half ago. We were booked for OKA-HND-LAX 3 of us in business class on august 1st, got a txt and email 3 days before a Typhoon was going to hit Okinawa and saying that our flight from OKA-HND was cancelled. It was all under one reservation. Fine not a big deal, however when I called Jal and mentioned that I have a connection that I will not be able to make they told me to contact AA about it since it was there ticket and all. I contacted AA regarding this, and they said they would be willing to put me on another international jal flight, if JAL can open up the award space for me.
Called Jal back and talked to a supervisor. JAL basically said your on your own unless you wanna buy a cash ticket and was for $3000 per person in coach and then those tickets would also be waitlisted for the international segment. Jal said they can’t help me, but they were able to find something October for me on points in economy. I said that was just insane. After talking to American about the situation, they were fully on board with helping me out. American airlines had
had no seats at all for sale from TYO-LAX or DFW. They were overbooked for most of the month. So they couldn’t put me on any of their flights.
After going back and forth between JAL and AA trying to get out of Okinawa and talking with both of them for over 10 hours I was super mad and exhausted after fighting with them, I decided to call JAL once more and told them that my tourist visa was going to expire soon. The supervisor called me back on August 1st later saying they found something for me for August 8th because they wanted to make sure that I could leave and not have any troubles with my visa expiring before I leave. Only then they were able to help me and even put me in Business class as what we originally had. The storm was bad that it closed down the airport 2 times for 2 days. I don’t have any issue with them putting me on this flight on the 8th, at all but if they just rescheduled me from the beginning that would have been great. But them saying that there was nothing and only until I basically had to lie and say that my visa is expiring in not a good way to handle passengers situations.
The entire time American airlines was working with me to find stuff, but whatever aa found Jal would not release the tickets for AA to book, they said they are only doing cash tickets. Anyways all is fine now since Im back on American soil. But this situation really put a very sour taste in my mouth with them on the back end of the company.
I had no issue trying to work a schedule out with Japan airlines to get me out of Japan, but to basically give up and say im on my own is not professional.
“Buffoon took a group of 31 students from Carnegie Vanguard High School in Texas on a summer trip to Japan.” D’oh!
Boffoon in the begining of article became Bufoon the next sentence.
Is that what were you thinking about him? Lol.
That was auto-correct!