Reservations not honored

[mary phillips]

Reservations not honored. 2 of us arrived over 2 hours before a flight, and it was overbooked by 12. We were part of a tour, and despite the best efforts of a Grand Circle rep, we were offered Brisbane instead of Melbourne, only to find it was also overbooked. Ended up in Sydney with only an hour to go through customs and get a flight to Melbourne. Ended up missing the first day of the tour.
The Qantas desk in Los Angeles was a disorganized mess. WHY NOT ENABLE ONLINE RESERVATION CONFIRMATIONS?

 

[ChrisBNE]

qantas.com -> manage my booking?

 

[Cyclogenesis]

Reservations not honored. 2 of us arrived over 2 hours before a flight, and it was overbooked by 12. We were part of a tour, and despite the best efforts of a Grand Circle rep, we were offered Brisbane instead of Melbourne, only to find it was also overbooked. Ended up in Sydney with only an hour to go through customs and get a flight to Melbourne. Ended up missing the first day of the tour.
The Qantas desk in Los Angeles was a disorganized mess. WHY NOT ENABLE ONLINE RESERVATION CONFIRMATIONS?

Hi Mary,
Chris is right, you can check what is going on in manage my booking or calling QF..

Just out of interest, which QF flight (I assume you were on QF94, but which night?) There seemed to be some major issues when I went through on friday night. Was it a Qantas ticket or another airline code-sharing/interlining?

Did you have travel insurance?

 

[mary phillips]

October 11. We were told that seating was strictly first come, first served. The GC agent enquired about ways to manage booking. Response? First come, etc.

 

[Worldtraveller8888]

What a terrible way to start the tour, Mary. I hope things got better after that for you.

I'm not suggesting that you could have done this necessarily on a group tour, but would checking in online before you leave the hotel/home remove the risk of being offloaded due oversale?

If it strictly first come, first served, then it would seem to work... ?

WT

 

[mary phillips]

We actually tried to do that but were unable to get through to complete it. The first come, etc. really surprised us.

 

[serfty]

We actually tried to do that but were unable to get through to complete it. The first come, etc. really surprised us.

It it quite likely that OLCI was disabled due to the overbooking situation.

 

[ozbeachbabe]

I'm not saying that this was the case in your situation but what can and has happened in the past is the checkin system Altea recognises that a flight is overbooked by 12 people so then looks for 12 pax with the lowest tier status eg ff redemptions "X" class, groups "G" class etc. If these pax were Emerald fflyers (OWE) then obviously their status would override their booking class so they would not be bumped.

WHY NOT ENABLE ONLINE RESERVATION CONFIRMATIONS?

If you're talking about enabling online checkin, quite possibly it was enabled however it may be that when you attempted to checkin online, it did work however due to the oversale put you on standby immediately and of course leaving you to think that your attempt was unsuccessful due to not getting a boarding pass.

Unless you two were the last to checkin (even at 2 hours prior) and the airline had already checked in the maximum amount of pax for that flight, in light of the above I think it's a bit simplistic for the airport staff to say first come first serve as airport staff can override Altea's recommendations.

They should have managed it better and monitored the online web check pax - much easier to find two other pax than split up part of a group. Even if you didn't checkin online they should not split up a group anyway. They should be looking for volunteers for offload at the start of checkin and dealing with it then not waiting for the last 12 only to say "too bad so sad". However given that flights to SYD & BNE were also overbooked it didn't give staff a lot of options.

Just curious, did you arrive at the airport after the rest of the group? When you arrived at the airport did everyone else get their boarding passes straight away? Did anyone else in your group attempt to web checkin?

Overbooking situations can occur simply due to an aircraft swap whereby the new aircraft has fewer seats that the previous aircraft hence resulting in an immediate oversale.

Another reason may have been the aircraft is weight restricted if it has to take extra fuel due to weather conditions en route or at the final destination. So although there are physically empty seats on the flight it's capped at a certain amount of pax.

The Qantas desk in Los Angeles was a disorganized mess

I can well imagine. I don't believe it's actual QF staff either & contractors are not generally as knowledgeable about the airline systems, policies or procedures. Some might say they're trained monkeys and we all know that whilst you might be able to teach a monkey how to ride a bike you can't teach a monkey to fix it!

Hope you have an awesome holiday in Oz Mary and that your flight back is better than the one coming down under!

Cheers

Oz

 

[JohnK]

That is really surprising. When did first come, first served enter into the conditions of a flight booking?

 

[MelUser]

I had a few trip to US last year and on 1 coming back in October - a Friday night, the CSM was telling me that Qantas had to send 30 people to LAX airport hotels as they could not get on flights.

I think that the 30 was across all the QF flights - ie BNE, 108, 12, 94 and 26.

All my departures were on a Friday night and I would never describe QF checkin at LA (Tom Bradley) as disorganised.

Friday nights are very busy for QF at LAX as I imagine that most, if not all, flights are oversold.

I think Qantas allows checkin from 2pm in the afternoon at TBIT LAX although I usually checkin about 3 hours before flight departure.

Whilst most of LAX checkin is generic airport staff, Qantas have at least 2 of their own staff wandering up and down helping the checkin staff - eg when a customer has too much luggage or wants to do something out of the square.

What night of the week was your departure?

 

[NM]

I think Qantas allows checkin from 2pm in the afternoon at TBIT LAX although I usually checkin about 3 hours before flight departure.

Also keep in mind that a large number of QF passengers ex-LAX have checked in many hours earlier at differnet airports and make connections only at LAX. So those most likely to be last to check-in will be those doing so at LAX. My guess (and that's just what it is) would be that somewhere between 50-75% of passengers boarding QF flights at LAX have arrived on a connecting flight and hence likely to already be checked-in long before most people using the LAX check-in facilities.

 

[MelUser]

This is correct - last year I flew ORD-LAX-MEL and DFW-LAX-MEL so my checkin time would have been before most checking in from LA. In fact I have personally had more flights than not which commenced in places other than LAX when returning home to OZ.

 

[lovestotravel]

Also keep in mind that a large number of QF passengers ex-LAX have checked in many hours earlier at differnet airports and make connections only at LAX. So those most likely to be last to check-in will be those doing so at LAX. My guess (and that's just what it is) would be that somewhere between 50-75% of passengers boarding QF flights at LAX have arrived on a connecting flight and hence likely to already be checked-in long before most people using the LAX check-in facilities.

Indeed! Even when checking in VERY early at LAX for a flight to MEL the SEQ number is always 220+

 

[MelUser]

I just checked BP for Sequence number for QF 94 last month for LAX checkin - checkin was about 7:45pm and number is 239.

THis was another overloaded flight - some family members travelling with us although on a separate reservation were routed via SYD but upgraded to next class of service (that's a very AA term!) and put on the A380 so they were not complaining!

 

[ozbeachbabe]

MelUser

THis was another overloaded flight - some family members travelling with us although on a separate reservation were routed via SYD but upgraded to next class of service

Did any of your family in either booking have your seats allocated at the time of reservation or sometime prior to departure or did you leave until you arrived at the airport?

Generally speaking before a confirmed passenger is put onto a standby basis, Altea looks for available seats to allocate to pax when the checkin process happens but when there is insufficient seats on the seatmap to allocate to everyone it's then the system puts them on standby eg party of 4 but only 3 seats left one pax will go onto standby.

I'm just not 100% sure if the system throws someone onto standby even if they have seat allocation eg there might two couples left to checkin but only 2 seats left. Couple A has seat allocation but travelling on an airfare that is of a lesser 'value' than couple B who don't have seat allocation.

The $64,000 question is if couple A checkin before couple B would the system override their pre-allocated seating and put them on standby thus freeing up the last two seats on the flight to the couple with a slightly higher airfare :?: :?:

Now if couple B checked in first (despite being on a higher fare than Couple A) they would be put on standby because there are no physical seats showing available on the seatmap to give them. Even though the other couple haven't yet checked in, seat numbers on the seat map show occupied whether someone has checked in or not.

I don't think anyone can ever be 100% guaranteed of not being bumped however if you already have seat allocation prior to arriving at the airport this gives you a distinct advantage over someone who hasn't done it. Airport staff would first need to manually de-allocate the seats allocated to pax yet to checkin before onloading standby pax.

The above paragraph relates to people that don't have any tier status. Obviously FFPLs etc would not be offloaded I would hope.

I don't necessarily think that just because you check-in at another city eg ORD or if you're the very first person to checkin at TBIT at LAX at 1400hours that you're a sure thing because if the flight is overbooked & the system has to target 20 pax to put on standby it will know which are the 20 with the lowest common denominator irrespective of when or where they checkin.

What will matter is how it's managed and by whom. Eg at LAX as they have some QF employees they can always override the system recommendations for offload and force you onto the flight as long as long as there's seats still there.

At a downline port you are more likely to be checked in by another airline, ground handler or contractor so if you go onto standby they'll more than likely handball it with "you'll have to see QF once you arrive in LAX" - not something you want to hear. Their sign-on probably wouldn't give them permission to onload you anyway and it's pretty unlikely they'd be proactive enough to call QF at LAX to get it sorted.

Oz

 

[clifford]

Flying UA, I don't think I would ever be "offloaded"

My status, and my friend, a customer service agent at SFO would see to that.

 

[MelUser]

Did any of your family in either booking have your seats allocated at the time of reservation or sometime prior to departure or did you leave until you arrived at the airport?


____________________________________________________

We all had allocated seats - they were business seats with Premium Economy service so very good seats given price paid for transpacific route fare (transpacific route has inflated prices due to lack of competition but don't get me started).

I watch expert flyer and seat maps in the all important 24 hours before departure when a flight comes under airport control and the first funny business I noticed was about 12 hours before flight departure the allocated seats became vacant. I then checked the reservation via checkmytrip and say that my relatives had been moved to another flight and upgraded to the next class of service - Business.