United demands a change fee – when the reservation hasn’t changed.

One thing about the travel business, even after over twenty years when you think you have heard it all … there’s something new.

And sure enough, United Airlines came up with one today. They are demanding a passenger pay significant change fees on a nonrefundable ticket, when no reservation changes are involved and the ticketed fares are all valid.

Admittedly, it’s a complicated trip. A client had been going from Phoenix to Bozeman for a month, returning to San Francisco. All flights to Bozeman on United go through Denver.

But during that time, he needed to return to Denver for a brief meeting. Our agency Apollo reservation computer, which is actually the same system United uses, showed a fare that allows a stopover on the way in Denver from Bozeman for only $55, and automatically priced the reservations accordingly, showing the side trip as part of the same ticket.

Thus, since the client’s client wanted one ticket for reimubursment purposes we issued one nonrefundable ticket for $766 and everything was fine. Temporarily.

Because the gentleman in question is taking the same flight a week apart, United’s computer system shows it as a duplicate, even though both flights are paid with individual fares. So they canceled one of the flights. I reinstated the flight, and called a supervisor to see what we could to stop it from happening again.

So now the fun begins. While a human can see that the fares and flights are valid, apparently there is no way to tell the computer this. United, like many carriers, has updated their computer to robotically search and cancel duplicate flights. Which like many computer upgrades, sounds better in theory than in practice. (The same computer robot also can cancel similar names, even when it is two separate people with separate tickets.)

In this case, to prevent the computer from mistakenly canceling the second flight, United would like the ticket re-issued in two parts, booked separately.

But this would mean he would have a connecting flight home booked on two separate records which could cause checked baggage problems and which also means United would not show the flight as a collection in case of delays.

In addition, the airline wants him to pay a change fee to reissue the first ticket. Then pay AGAIN to put the flight their system sees as a duplicate on a separate ticket. Total cost, about $200. For exactly what he paid for last week.

One nice agent suggested we simply keep reinstating the flight, and hope that that it doesn’t sell out.

And while the computer is apparently unstoppable, the humans, as far as waiving the penalties, are immovable.

So for the future, if a situation like this comes up again, we will warn clients that we have to issue two tickets, even if it causes problems for them. And airlines wonder why they have shaky relations with consumers and travel agents.

To err is human, to really mess things up it takes a computer algorithm.