North Texas Family Faces Vacation Ticket Troubles

Valerie and Wes Johnson planned and saved for four years to take two of their grandchildren on an epic, three-week vacation across England last summer.

“We had a fantastic time, Just meeting up with family and doing things.”

Val said she booked flights and trip insurance through Expedia in February 2023, for roundtrip fares between DFW and London Heathrow last July.

The night before the flight, she checked in on American Airlines’ website but couldn’t get boarding passes. When the Johnsons arrived at the airport, an airline employee gave them bad news.

“He said, ‘There are no tickets for you,’” Val said. “You’re not on this flight.”

They called Expedia from the airport and were told their tickets were canceled.

“There was no indication to say that anything had been canceled,” Val said. Luckily, they had arrived nearly four hours before their flight, because they spent three hours at the check-in desk while employees tried to find their missing tickets.

With plans made and accommodations already booked in different cities and towns around England, they had to make a painful financial decision: they purchased new airline tickets for all four of them, at a cost of more than $4,700 each. The grand total: more than $19,000—for the same seats they had already paid more than $8,800 for.

They nearly maxed out the credit card they had planned to use for trip expenses.

“I thought, ‘I’ll just have to deal with this later,’” Val said.

Months later, after the otherwise successful trip, the problem of the twice-purchased seats still wasn’t resolved. They appealed to their credit card company, American Airlines, and Expedia.

The consumer team worked with Expedia to get the Johnsons a refund of $19,172.60.

“I’m just so pleased that we reached out to you and you all responded,” Val said.

In an email, an Expedia spokesperson said:

“When situations like this occur, we advocate for the traveler to find the best outcome. We appreciate the family’s patience while we worked through this matter with the airline and we are happy to share the tickets will be refunded.”

We spoke to Sally French at NerdWallet about situations like these. She said when you buy airline tickets or book rooms through a third-party booking site instead of directly through the airline or hotel, it adds another layer of bureaucracy if something goes wrong.

“And so, when you get in a situation where, say you have a canceled flight, now you’re not just dealing with the airline, but you also have to go through the agency that booked that ticket,” French said.

“Especially if you’re in a situation like this person who has to take off on their flight, let’s say that day, getting in touch with that middleman can be unnecessarily complicated, rather than being able to work with the airline directly.”