More Schedule Change Problems

For some years, I have wanted to spend a month 'doing' South America. FInally, towards the end of last year I had sufficient air miles in my account to get 14 of the 16 flights I need. Knowing that unless you book popular routes virtually on the day booking opens (in my case, about 350 days ahead), I spent many days working out the routes and schedules. It then took me hours with the main carrier getting seats on as many as possible. I had to compromise a bit, including one internal overnight flight which I did not want, but nothing else was available (on the day booking opened??). FInally I had my trip for October/November 2010 settled.

The problem which has arisen is that if you book, as suggested by almost all the airlines, up to a year ahead, you are then at the mercy of schedule changes (not a major problem I thought as none of my flights are on low cost carriers). That's become a bit of a joke, because I just got a call this morning to tell me that yet another flight has been changed - and yet again I can not take the new one as it will depart before I actually arrive in the departure city. Thankfully, the scheduled carriers must have an obligation to make sure you can connect and within minutes I was on another acceptable flight. But my carefully planned schedule is increasingly looking quite different from what I had planned. And I now have in my file several dozen sheets of paper with my flight tickets, as I am reluctant to throw out 'dead' bookings in case for any reason I have problems with the 'new' tickets (which is not unknown).

Have other readers had this problem?