A Flight Retiming Woes: Why You Should Always Double-Check
Last year, we booked our flight to Iceland with Thai Airways, transiting through Oslo. Our outbound journey went smoothly, but our return flight was a different story.
The original flight was scheduled as KEF to OSL from 7:50 AM to 12:35 PM, with a connecting flight from OSL to BKK at 2:15 PM, landing in Bangkok at 6:15 AM the next day. I chose this short layover of 1 hour and 40 minutes, assuming our bags would be checked all the way through to Bangkok and we wouldn’t need to go through immigration. My recent research, however, suggests this may not always be true.
Sometime in August, my husband received an SMS notification about a flight time change. He called Thai Airways three weeks before our trip and was assured the transit time was sufficient—a response that proved to be unhelpful. It wasn’t until the day of our departure from Bangkok to Iceland that I looked at the new details. The layover had been reduced to an extremely tight 1 hour and 10 minutes.
On departure day, we inquired at the check-in counter, and the staff were surprised by our situation. They sent us to the Thai Airways ticketing office, which, after 9:00 PM, seemed to be a crisis center with passengers of all nationalities facing different issues. The language barrier was also a challenge—we were probably the only passengers speaking fluent Thai and English that night!
The staff confirmed that the likelihood of missing our connecting flight was extremely high. When we asked what would happen if we missed the flight, they couldn’t confirm if we’d be put on the next available flight right away. They also told us that changing our ticket would cost extra, as it was a special fare, but my husband was adamant.
We didn’t want to risk a stressful emergency and decided it was better to simply plan for an extra day in Oslo. We requested to change the Oslo-Bangkok flight to the next day at no additional cost. The staff advised that they couldn’t make the change immediately (especially since it was a Friday night and the office might be closed over the weekend) but would get it done, and they instructed us to contact a generic hotline or email if we needed to follow up.
We refused, explaining that our recent experience with them had shown that these numbers and emails often went unanswered. We insisted on a direct contact, and after some persistence, we got the direct email address for the staff member who attended to us: Book.w.ds-C3@thaiairways.com. Four days later, I sent a follow-up email, which went unanswered.
Just three days after that, we received a confirmation email with our new ticket. The change was approved at no cost! Our departure from Keflavik on October 25, 2024, remained the same (7:50 AM to 12:35 PM in Oslo), but our connecting flight was moved to the next day, October 26, departing at 1:45 PM and landing in Bangkok on October 27 at 6:15 AM.
This experience taught us a valuable lesson: always double-check your flight details, especially after a retiming. It’s a reminder that sometimes, being persistent and refusing to accept a generic answer can make all the difference.
