dsn@rochester.UUCP (Dana S. Nau) (11/24/85)
Airline rates are so complicated that even the airline agents are getting confused. When I tried to change an airline booking, the result was the complicated mess described below. My original booking was: WED (via Airline A): Rochester --> Atlanta (change planes) --> Miami FRI (via Airline B): Miami --> Baltimore (change planes) --> Rochester Total cost: $347. Several days before the trip I decided I wanted to change the booking to WED (via Airline A): same flights as before FRI (via Airline B): same flight as before from Miami to Baltimore SAT (via Airline B): Baltimore --> Rochester I called Airline B, and was told I couldn't change the booking without paying an extra $120. Supposedly this was because my return trip had been at a special fare of $198, and there were no tickets left at this fare. Not wishing to pay this much, I didn't change my booking. Friday in Miami, I discovered that Airline B's normal fares were Miami --> Baltimore on Friday: $130 Baltimore --> Rochester on Saturday: $39 ------------------------------------------ total: $169 Note that this is $29 *less* than the $198 fare, not $120 more. I called Airline B again, pointed out this information to the woman who answered, and proposed that one option would be for me to buy an additional one-way ticket from Baltimore to Rochester and discard the corresponding part of my original ticket, at a cost of $39 rather than $120. She said she thought that was illegal, but that she would check with her manager. She returned a few minutes later, and said that in fact it WAS possible for me to change my booking and get the $169 fare, rather than having to pay an additional $120. She changed my booking, and told me that I would get a $29 refund when I picked up the ticket at the airport. At the Miami airport, the ticket agent said that according to the fine print on my ticket, my original return-trip fare had been $149, not $198--and therefore instead of deserving a refund, I owed the airline $20. At my request, he left to check with the woman I had talked to on the phone. Ten minutes later--and with my plane due to leave in less than 15 minutes--I asked another agent to bring the first agent back so that I could get my ticket and leave. He hadn't been able to get through to the person I had talked to earlier, but being anxious not to miss my plane, I paid the extra $20. TWO QUESTIONS: (1) Would it really have been illegal for me to buy an additional ticket and then discard part of my original one without asking for a refund? If so, then why? Why should I be obligated to use all of the original ticket, as long as I don't ask them to refund the part I don't use? (2) I left out the airline names because I suspect Airline B did no worse (and perhaps better!) than most other airlines would have done. Has anyone else had similar experiences? -- Dana S. Nau (dsn@rochester) from U. of Maryland, on sabbatical at U. of Rochester
spear@ihopb.UUCP (Steven Spearman) (11/27/85)
My understanding about using only part of an airline ticket in order to get a lower fare to some intermediate city is that there is no legal question. It is considered unethical (??) and most travel agents will not book something with this intention. But its still quite common.
mazlack@ernie.BERKELEY.EDU (Lawrence J. &) (11/27/85)
> >(1) Would it really have been illegal for me to buy an additional ticket and >then discard part of my original one without asking for a refund? If so, >then why? Why should I be obligated to use all of the original ticket, as >long as I don't ask them to refund the part I don't use? Your problems sound a lot like my problems. I regularily find it cheaper to getof the plane a stop earlier (only works if you hand carry everything). No, what you ask is NOT illegal. I do it often. (Asking for the unused part usually doesn't work because it isn't a "point to point" ticket.) ... Larry Mazlack (on sabbatical at UC Berkeley) MAZLACK@ERNIE.BERKELEY.EDU
ark@alice.UucP (Andrew Koenig) (11/28/85)
> My understanding about using only part of an airline ticket in order > to get a lower fare to some intermediate city is that there is no > legal question. It is considered unethical (??) and most travel agents > will not book something with this intention. But its still quite common. I heard that if you book a multi-leg flight and don't show up for the second (or subsequent) leg, you will be presumed to have left a bomb aboard the airplane and the flight will be held until you can be found or until all your luggage has been removed from the flight.
msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) (11/30/85)
A year or two ago there was some kind of cheap fare offered that included travel from New York to Sydney with a change of plane in Toronto. It was cheaper than any Toronto-Sydney fare, so travel agents here in Toronto started selling these tickets for Toronto-Sydney passengers. (For those in far parts of the distribution: Toronto is about 1+ hour by air from New York, but about 12-15 hours from Sydney.) The Canadian government *stomped* on the practice: "we never authorized sale of such tickets, so you can't do it". Travel agents were ordered not to sell the fare. When people found ways to get the tickets from US sources, the government sent inspectors to Toronto airport to check people's tickets for the relevant flights to Sydney. If the ticket showed this particular fare, the passenger was asked "Did you in fact come from New York?" -- and if the answer was "No", the passenger was barred from the journey. If it was "Yes" and the appropriate page was absent from the ticket, I understand they took your word for it. Of course, air travel in Canada is just now beginning to undergo deregulation, so this is irrelevant to the question of whether this kind of thing is legal in the US, and I'm not even sure about here. But I thought it might be of interest. Mark Brader, Toronto, Canada (Not a lawyer, despite posting from the Law Society machine.)
ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (11/30/85)
> I heard that if you book a multi-leg flight and don't show up > for the second (or subsequent) leg, you will be presumed to have > left a bomb aboard the airplane and the flight will be held > until you can be found or until all your luggage has been removed > from the flight. Well this is certainly true if you check luggage and don't show up for the flight. It's happened to me (that is, I was on a flight held up why they started searching for a no-show's bags that he had checked). -Ron