Online communication is a bit cause and effect. People want cheap travel, therefore there is no money for certain luxuries, like human beings. If you can communicate with a company, then they need to have staff to deal with that; many airlines do not wish to (freely)communicate with their clients (eg RyanAir) (that’s not a criticism, by the way. RyanAir does exactly what it says on the tin, no more, no less) so they charge for what is, in effect a luxury.

If they had Skype etc, then the number of people communicating would increase and that would mean more people to deal with that communication, so up go costs, up go fares… BA introduced a premium number for travel agents result: agents only spoke to them when the need was dire, otherwise the agents worked it out for themselves or found the answer on the BA website.

That said, the BA (trade) website is very good and up to date and if one does need to call, phones are answered quickly and their staff know what they are talking about – which is a lot more than can be said for some airline staff (such as British Midland, who are hopeless). I don’t know what you are going to do about the conditions.

A lot has to be got across due to endless legislation, which makes the EEC Regulations For the Importation of Ducks Egss look like chicken feed (eh?). If it was in plain English, the lawyers would have a field day. Mind you, not many can actually write plain English, these days, it seems.

You are right about the CAA and administration. They really should have clear and concise instructions on “What to do if your holiday company/ airline goes bust” One would have thought a simple flow chart style web page would go a long way….

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How about doing away with the ridulous supplemental luggage charges that sprang up over the past 6 months?

Now that fuel prices have declined well over 50%, airlines should lock in long term fuel rates (similar to what Southwest did in the US, which proved to be enormously beneficial to their bottom line) and pass along a portion of the savings to their customers.

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Darren

To answer your point about travel agents getting inundated. Yes we do and normally with my flight was come back tomorrow kind of questions. These are updated on ATOL website. As to other 2 most common questions, how do I get money back and what do I do now, The answers are simple to travel agents because we done it before and will do it again. This is why Travel Agents can help.

As regarding website and contact, I will agree with Murray, if there was a way to make a charge for website contact then the no frills companies would add this feature to them. The whole point of there websites is to save money and not employ staff. So having online contact defeats that reasoning. As the old saying goes “you pay your money you take your choice”.

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Darren, it’s not that principals don’t want to communicate via the internet it’s just that they do not wish to communicate – Full Stop! The internet, in an ideal (airline) world would be strictly a one way thing and as far as is technically possible a total DIY system that involves no return communication – if you get a problem, you look up the answer.

There is an inherent problem here. From a psycological point of view, apart from an item being preceived as being cheaper when bought online (and perceived is the right word. I was doing a flight Dubai to Moscow and I was £30 cheaper than Travelocity – using bog standard IATA fares and even with a twenty quid fee!) people who use the internet booking facilities want speed – I have read endless bits on how fast this or that is!.

Get in, get on, get done, get out – ergo, they are not the sort of people who are prepared to spend time churning through pages of stuff (which can often be in airline speak – ie ambiguous) to find an answer and that is where the system falls flat. Call travel agent who will usually then give client short shrift.

The human being at the airline is not a profit centre, he (or she) is a cost centre and therefore, they have to be paid for (on the low cost model) or simply done away with (on the RyanAir low cost model – which is why there is never a RyanAir person at any airport- again, not a criticism, that’s just the way they do it)

If you do not like it, by all means fly on a legacy airline – but there is a price. Now, with regard to all those charges for hold baggage (Pete!) fuel, airport charges, fee for breathing air at 32,000 feet etc, I believ it will be a case of what comes around, goes around.

Indeed, Aer Fungus and FlyBE Chief Exec’s have already said that they cannot find anything else to make optional – or as they put it “ways of extracting ancillary revenue” which means – I have an idea! (sez the exec’s) Let’s put the fare up a bit and say “Look! We include in the fare, baggage, check-in, a hot drink and free air at 32,000 feet” Yawn.

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