[Anne Hersh]

I rented a house in Provence for two weeks with a couple who are very close friends. My tickets were purchased in February. Continental & Luftansa.. Newark to Frankfurt to Nice, departing Sunday 06/05. Same itinerary for my return for 06/18. We got to the house on Monday at 6:00p.m.. Tuesday afternoon my friends learned that their mother was gravely ill and not expected to survive. They had to return. We spent the balance of the day trying to make flight changes, never went to bed as we had to drive back to Nice at 3:00 a.m.

I was shocked to learn that Continental was surcharging me $1114.00 for my flight change. The agent gave me a number to fax a letter to explaining the situation and that I "might" be able to get $200 of that back.

This is nothing short of abuse. Furthermore, both the return flights had many available seats (being a Wednesday) and they were getting my canceled seat back on a more desirable Saturday flight.

Newark is a major hub for Continental and is usually the airline I use for travel. I won't be using them in the future.