Take care when booking flight tickets online
By Darren Cronian on Thursday, January 27th, 2011

This post is written by Gourmet Chick who blogs about travel and food at but today she felt the need to rant. With the Ashes just finished lots of travellers will have recently made the trip from the UK to Australia. On my recent holiday to Australia I had to give a big thumbs down for a misleading website and bad customer service to Britain and Australia’s national carriers.

Take care when booking flight tickets online

Flight booked online

I purchased a flight from London to Melbourne with a three hour stop over in Bangkok which was a code share between the two carriers. I was shocked to discover just before my flight departed that the Bangkok to Melbourne would be operated by a budget airline which was the equivalent of Ryanair or Easyjet in Asia.

Check the flight information before booking

I had no idea this was the case when booking the flight as the only indication had been a small asterisk next to that leg of the journey which lead down to a footnote explaining that the flight would be operated by the budget carrier. When I called the customer service office with the obligatory half an hour on hold I was told nothing could be done and the flight could only be changed by rebooking at a £300 fee.

This was the increase in the flight price from when I had initially booked it. I was told there was no further avenue of complaint besides an email and when I then requested the number of the media office I was told: ”You should be able to find it yourself”. The return ticket cost £1,000 which is not a cheap ticket as you can get flights from £800 return to Australia however I wanted the superior service and air miles that these carriers offered.

Uncomfortable flight with budget airline

Instead I ended up on a 9 hour flight on a cramped budget carrier with the only difference between my fare and everyone else who had paid the equivalent of about £200 for their ticket by booking it direct through the budget airline being not having to pay for the awful airline food or the headsets. I did write a formal email of complaint and nothing came of it so felt compelled to turn to Travel Rants to vent.

Take care when booking tickets online

The moral of the story is to be very careful when booking tickets online and make sure you read all the asterisks and footnotes on your online booking, and don’t even bother calling customer service as it will just be a waste of your time.


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11 responses to “Take care when booking flight tickets online”

Zoe | 28 January, 2011 at 12:12 pm

I appreciate that flight may not have been as she dreamt it might have been however, am I right in thinking that her illusions were shattered because she hadn’t bothered to read the footnote?

In the travel industry we struggle to ensure that our customers are happy, their complaints are addressed and everyone is treated fairly. We do ask that the person booking has read the agreement before they sign. To claim that you had “no idea” seems a little unfair, especially as she acknowledges she didn’t read the footnote.

I think this illustrates some of the issues with cutting out the agents and going straight to the internet to book. If she had called the airline or a flight broker and explained her requirements, she no doubt would have got what she wanted. If not, by all means complain.

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Josh Chandler | 28 January, 2011 at 5:21 pm

Darren,

The moral of the story is always to read the fine print. I know how much time it can take to do so, but it can make all the difference (especially when you are paying a lot of money for your flight!)

I usually hate reading the fine print, but with that type of transaction I always make time. :)

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Matt | 28 January, 2011 at 10:18 pm

I’m guessing the airline was Jetstar, which is awful but airlines clearly label on their site which airline operates the flight and jetstar flights have a different code than Qantas too. Moreover, airline rebooking fees are not anything new.

The real moral of this story is “Don’t be an idiot. Look over your flight details before you hit purchase.”

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Joey Phi | 30 January, 2011 at 3:08 am

This is why I keep my miles so I can get a nice business class ticket on long flights!

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EagerrTraveler | 30 January, 2011 at 7:03 pm

Yup..I screwed up a reservation with Virgin Blue in Australia. I was off by a day and realized it milliseconds after I pressed enter. I ended up phoning customer service and paying the change fees. An expensive mistake.

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Darren Cronian | 30 January, 2011 at 7:05 pm

The most popular flight booking mistake I receive emails about is the misspelling of the passengers surname or forename. This doesn’t match the passport so the passenger has to contact the airline who tells them that they have to rebook the flight, costing them a lot of money.

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Beth Friedman | 30 January, 2011 at 7:05 pm

Working with a travel agent will also help avoid issues when planning air travel :)

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Murray H | 30 January, 2011 at 7:28 pm

Quite right. online is fine for, possibly, the simple short haulpoint to point stuff, but anything like this, one is much better off with a travel agent. There are a number of reasons:

1. A travel agent can (usually) “hold” a reservation – maybe only for a few hours, though generally about a day. This gives you a chance to look at the booking closely, in the certain knowledge that it won’t disappear in the meanwhile – and the fare will stay, as well. This gives you a chance to check the booking generally, the name spelling and that your reservation takes you where you want to be.

2. All small print and notes are relevant, it’s just that some bits are more relevant than others. This sounds a bit Orwellian, but it’s true. A travel agent will be able to pick out the relevant bits, look you in the eyes and make sure you have grasped them. Websites give you long spiels and let you work out what is really important.

3. Agents will tell you what you are in for. Many sites, especially nowadays, have a rather tenuous grasp on reality when it comes to the practicality of air travel… including airlines own sites. A good agent will tell you what’s best value for what you want to do, it may not be the cheapest – but what is best value and what is cheapest are very, very different.

4. Agents know the, erm… “wrinkles”. These do not always apply in every case, but there are some things an agent knows how to do a lot better than any website will tell you. Airline websites, especially, will, on balance, only tell you about their airline… and in many long haul trip situations, that is not what is always best.

5. With an agent (high street type), there is someone you know and can shout at. Hopefully you won’t need to… but most agents take the view that their job is to fix your problem… not to pass it on to someone else.

6. There is a big myth that an agent will charge more. Well, you will get a fee (what do you think online agents live off, by the way?)… but it is not massive and given the points mentioned above, perhaps worthwhile. “Cheap” or discounted fares are available to most agents and online agent fares are pretty much the same as high street agent fares. If you shop around, the price will generally be about the same…. If it’s coming to £1000, then you may find £1010 or £990… but you are not suddenly going to find a miraculous website that will sell exactly the same thing for £200. Remember, there are a finite number of aircraft going to a destination and each has a finite number of seats and a finite number of cheap seats. If and aeroplane has 250 seats and has 250 humans booked on it… it’s full.

Next time, pop in! We are here to help… and we don’t bite….

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Jack Norell | 31 January, 2011 at 8:32 am

We may be unfair to the author here in the comments. It doesn’t say which site this was booked on, but I’ve seen a couple of examples where flights come up as legacy carriers only, when they’re really combined with budget flights!

Yes, was noted in a footnote, but could well have been strongly signposted as a full-service itinerary… In which case it’s misselling even if the traveler has a detail advising them otherwise.

Marketing and selling laws are quite protective of consumers, overall, and airlines and websites often trample all over those regulations to make more money.

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Dan | 1 February, 2011 at 10:45 am

I totally agree with @Murray H that this wouldn’t have happened with a travel agent. Maybe a human interface is better than a webpage for purchasing travel services. He has the obligation to explain you all the details and you can ask all questions. Sometimes a webpage can have way too much information on it in order for you to read every asterisc. After all the main benefit of purchasing online is that it is as simple as 1 2 3. If you have to be so careful I prefer the human interaction, where you are attended :)

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Gourmet Chick | 1 February, 2011 at 5:00 pm

Thanks for your comments on this post everyone. Zoe I agree it was totally my own fault for not reading the footnote but at the same time I think it is pretty tricky of the airlines and quite deliberate to hide the flight provider in a tiny footnote. Beth and Murray I agree booking with an agent would have avoided all my problems and this experience has really made me realise the value of agents.

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