I hope this is the right place for this- I have found myself in an unusual flights booking situation that hopefully some of the experienced veterans can help me with.
I was fortunate enough to find $475 round-trip flights from Toronto to Israel. It is for myself, my wife, our 3-year-old, and 6-month-old. It's the Jet Airways flight through Amsterdam, with the Tel Aviv leg on ElAl.
Unfortunately, there were only 2 tickets at that price, and we need 3 paid tickets. Since I knew I had 24 hour cancellation on Orbitz, I grabbed 2, putting myself and 3-year-old on the ticket (since the baby is still nursing and will need to fly with my wife, in case they ended up on separate flights). My thinking was that I'd either buy them separate flights, or just buy the same flight at the higher price for just the third ticket- it would still be a bargain.
Unfortunately, for some strange reason, the price for the next seat jumped to $1,800+. I know, from $475 to $1,800 in one shot- pretty strange. So I started playing around. By removing the single TLV-AMS leg on the way back, and booking it multi-city, the flight dropped to $600- with the other 3 legs being the same flights as me. I grabbed it, and booked the lap child together at the same time ($100). All that was left was buying the ElAl flight to Amsterdam- and voila, it is available on ElAl points, it will cost 20KMR plus $80, not great but valuing MR at 1.5, her flight still comes through at $980 total, with 2 flights at $475. All in all, could be worse.
However, I realized that this means that, even though we will all be on the same flights, for my wife that TLV-AMS leg is a separate ticket completely. What will she need to do in Amsterdam before getting on that second flight? Since, from the perspective of Jet Airways, she is beginning her journey that day in Amsterdam- will she need to go through immigration and go down to the regular check-in counter like someone showing up in Amsterdam, or can she just go to the gate and get her boarding pass there? We'll make sure she doesn't check any luggage. Most importantly though- What happens if that first flight gets delayed? Our connection is only 1 hour and 15 minutes. Both Jet Airways and ElAl are in the same area of the airport, but I think we will all still have to go through security, right? If the worst happens and we miss the connection, will we get rebooked? Or, is there chance Jet Airways will say "We will rebook you since it was one ticket, but your wife simply missed her flight through no fault of ours and we don't have to accommodate her." What will we do in this situation? I'm a bit new to this kind of situation, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks all!