JJ

May 26, 2025

PLAY canceled my flights at short notice with no viable alternatives offered

Shocking experience. This was my first time using PLAY airlines, safe to say I won't be using them again. I booked 2 international flights, far in advance to ensure a good price. They canceled one about 2 months before the flight. There was an alternative offered the following day, but no consideration was made of the fact I'd have to cover an extra night hotel or take an extra day off work (despite my request). Alternative flights on the same day with other airlines had significantly increased in price by this point. A few weeks later they sent me a "reminder" that my other flight had been canceled. However, I never received any notification in the first place. In this case, there were no alternative flights to the same destination offered at all. The email mentioned flights to other destinations, but no list was provided and when I logged into my account it didn't provide any alternatives to review. It didn't even state that the flight was canceled. PLAY has no customer service number you can call so I couldn't even confirm this over the phone. Again, the alternative flights with other airlines had significantly increased in cost by this point. Given the non refundable hotel bookings and other flights I have in this trip, I cannot simply cancel the trip, and instead will just have to eat the cost of changing flights to another airline. The worst part is no reason was given for the flight cancellations, they simply said "schedule changes". It's so frustrating that you can carefully plan a trip far in advance and then the airline just pulls the rug out from underneath you and you essentially have no recourse as long as they notify you more than 14 days in advance of the flight. I suppose you get what you pay for, but it doesn't seem fair that the customer should end up significantly worse off when there's no way to know whether an airline is going to cancel your flight or not. How do you plan for that?