Airlines love to have customers book on their Web sites. It saves them booking fees, and keeps the passengers from choosing a different carrier. And they love to trumpet lowest fare guarantees and bonus mile offers to that end. But it limits travelers’ options when things go wrong.
Many frequent travelers also like booking directly with their preferred airlines, and they figure they can fix any problem themselves, especially with a simple domestic ticket. Here’s a story about a simple domestic ticket that almost became a major business disaster.
A CEO with a very tight schedule (doesn’t that describe them all?) had booked a United flight from San Francisco to San Diego. With a critically important dinner meeting with less than an hour between flight arrival and when he had to be there.
This client used to book all his domestic tickets at United.com, but his assistant is now booking through our agency, if for no other reasons than accounting and to have some way to keep track of him during travel.
In the middle of the afternoon,, United sent him a message saying the plane would be almost an hour late. Since he is a Global Services (aka Godlike Status) elite level traveler with United, he called them immediately. Unfortunately, the earlier flight had left at 1 p.m. and the agent told him there were no options.
To be fair, Global Services reservations agents are very good, but none of the connections he could make on the United ticket would have gotten him to San Diego in time. So his assistant called me in a panic.
Luckily, Southwest Airlines actually had a on-time flight that worked perfectly, so ten minutes later, we had him and a coworker booked on it. His assistant was even able to check him in so he didn’t even end up in the dreaded “C-for-center” section boarding group. He made the dinner with time to spare. And we will even be able to get a refund on the United flight.
By the way, even had the United agent been aware of the Southwest option, she could not have booked it. The airlines do not have ticketing agreements.
Now, this wasn’t rocket science, and I am not writing this as a “Use a Travel Agent” post, though certainly a good travel agent has access to various airlines. A smart travel arranger will also know to check Southwest, or Virgin America, or other low fare carriers, and a few sites do show their availability. But United.com doesn’t show them at all, nor does Expedia, Priceline, Travelocity or Orbitz.com, for example.
And even the top airline reservation agents may not have access to all other airline options. The United agent looked at American for example, but their flights were only connections, and not workable.
For that matter, had Southwest been the one to have a delayed flight, their agents wouldn’t have access to United flights either.
The best solution to booking travel will vary by travelers, and by the kind of trip involved. If a trip isn’t time sensitive, and there’s a good price on an airline site, then especially for a seasoned traveler, it might be worth “flying solo.”
But Fed Exp has built a business on “When it absolutely positively has to be there overnight.” Travel unfortunately never has absolute guarantees. But if you “absolutely, positively” have to be somewhere at a particular time, it’s also probably worth it to have a human, with as many choices as possible, on your side..
Janice Hough is a California-based travel agent a travel blogger and a part-time comedy writer. A frequent flier herself, she’s been doing battle with airlines, hotels, and other travel companies for over three decades. Besides writing for Travelers United, Janice has a humor blog at Leftcoastsportsbabe.com (Warning, the political and sports humor therein does not represent the views of anyone but herself.)
