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Travel Blog Archives
Travel Blog posts insightful comments on the latest international news that render us taken-aback in the domain of the travel facet of life. Travel-Blog: Travel-Agent News Airline, travel agent should pay expenses after flight change: December 2, 2007 Christopher Elliott's Column - Ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine:
Question: I'm trying to get reimbursed for an extra night at a hotel caused by an airline schedule change. Here's what happened: My husband and I booked a trip from Dallas to Kauai via Phoenix on US Airways. When we arrived in Phoenix, we learned that our scheduled flight had departed for Kauai two hours earlier. Neither the airline nor our travel agent, Cheaptickets.com, notified us. The next flight to Hawaii was three days later. US Airways sent us to Los Angeles that afternoon, where we had to get a hotel room until the flight to Honolulu the next morning. From there, we were on our own. We were able to catch a standby flight to Kauai, and we were reunited with our luggage later that night. We're trying to get our money back for a missed night of lodging in Kauai, the hotel at Los Angeles International Airport, plus toiletries we needed after we were separated from our luggage. I called US Airways, which suggested I got what I deserved for booking through Cheaptickets.com. Marlene Kelley, Lake Kiowa, Texas Travel Blog: Travel Agent News (Continued) Answer: Both the online travel agent and the airline should have notified you of the schedule change and offered to rebook the flight. When they failed to do that, they should have covered your expenses. You could have prevented this from happening by phoning the airline and agency to confirm your flight. Flight schedules can change, and the systems used to notify passengers are unreliable. You were dealing with an airline that had just completed a merger with America West and was trying to merge its computer-reservations systems. News reports should have prompted you to make a precautionary call. It is unusual for an airline to reschedule flights without trying to rebook a missing connection, and at the very least informing the travel agent. Something went terribly wrong. When you learned of the flight-schedule change, you should have spoken with a supervisor, who could have authorized a hotel voucher and given you permission to buy incidentals such as toothpaste and shampoo. Although a connection problem such as this one isn't specifically addressed in the airline's legal agreement, the airline created this situation and should have covered your costs. You shouldn't have paid for a hotel and assumed that either US Airways or Cheaptickets.com would pay for it. That's not how it works. Travel companies go to considerable lengths to make sure that requests like yours are met with a polite but firm "no," no matter how legitimate. I contacted the agency and the airline. US Airways agreed to send $500 worth of flight coupons, and Cheaptickets.com issued two $200 vouchers. Travel Blog Comment: Travel blog is of the opinion that the responsibility of a travel agent should not only be limited to acting like a middle man between the airline and the traveler, rather s/he should take the full charge of any and every promise s/he is making with the customer of her/his services s/he is buying from the airline in order to sell it further to the customer at a profit/commission. We cannot blame others for any misdeed of theirs if we, too, have been a partner in it at any level in the process. If we do something we must take full charge of it. We can't even blame circumstances for it and go unscathed! I invite you to subscribe to my E-zine titled Life Coach, free of charge. This E-zine publishes insightful comments on the latest international news that render us taken-aback in the domains of various facets of life. A not-to-be-missed opportunity! Subscribe to it here: I also invite you to subscribe to my Life Blog - no need to provide your e-mail address here. This RSS feed keeps you informed about new developments taking place on this site. It also harbors 25 journal bloglets posting insightful comments on the latest international news that render us taken-aback in the domains of various facets of life. In order to subscribe to the blog, right-click on the orange RSS button (see buttons up to the left) and then paste the URL into your RSS reader. Or click on add to My Yahoo! button or My MSN or Add To Google button if you keep a personalized home page there. If you are not sure what RSS or blogging is all about, click on What's an RSS Feed? here:
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