I hate airlines
I just booked flights for the return leg of our Christmas holidays with Virgin Blue. Their stupid booking system screwed me out of $50. If you search for tickets for 2 passengers and they've only got one flight available at the cheap rate of $89 they'll return a search result requiring you to pay $150 for both. That's extortion. So I went to make simultaneous bookings at $89*. Much more reasonable. Things were looking good. I managed to complete booking one at the $89 level (plus booking fee and baggage so $100 in total). Then when I went to complete the second booking at the $89 dollar level it told me someone else (me obviously) had booked that seat. Retards. What happened to the contract principle of offer and acceptance. I had to book again at $150. Plus extra costs for baggage and credit card fees. I hate airlines. At least I didn't pay $300 plus taxes. Stupid VirginBlue - I hope their media monitoring services pick up this rant and they act accordingly. But they'll probably cancel my flight.
End of rant.
*without baggage, credit card fees and optional carbon offsets... oh and the fee you can pay for the legroom available in an emergency exit row.
7 comments:
That same airline told me that they sit people travelling with infants at the back of the plane because it's closer to the nappy changing facilities, and despite the fact that you have to carry your infant and excess infant paraphenalia down a flight of stairs and up another one to get on the back of the plane.
I think I'm more likely to need to get on an off the plane than to use the change facility.
Fortunately now I don't have an infant, so I'm allowed to webcheck tomorrow before we get on the flight and sit WHEREVER I like.
Except the extra legroom seats, which you have to pay extra for for each leg. Each leg of your journey, not each leg of your body.
also, if you went back an hour later and tried again you might have got two $89 seats.
i'm not a fan of airlines either.
I have vowed never to fly Ryanair again. Being a newswatcher I'm sure you heard about London's Stanstead airport being shut by protesters recently? It happened to be the morning I was supposed to fly there from Berlin. To pu this in perspective, I was coming down with the flu and had down a really bad audition. Anyway, as we were nearing the passport check and boarding gate, we were told our flight had been delayed, and the sky news feed in the cafe confirmed why. We only waited for five minutes before an announcement was made that we were to go to gate 2, which sounded hopeful. However, with no word of explanation, we proceeded through gate two and found ourselves in the baggage retrieval area, which I suppose is a message that transcends language. There was not one word from Ryanair about what to do. The lady at the airport information desk pointed us to the appropriate desk, at which point (and after a long wait) we had the option to fly the next evening, or that evening, but to an airport in East Midlands, which resulted in a 54GBP train trip back to London, and an overall addition of 10 hours transit time. All, with no word of apology even from Ryan air.
And anyway, I'm sick of going to obscure airports that are over an hour away from where you were meant to be going. This is Europe, an hour is a long way! It really is a scam. By the time you factor in the cost of getting to the remote airfields, it's just easier and more pleasant to fly with someone like BA.
webcheck isn't any better. there was only one place with three seats together - two rows from the back. I bet if we had gone straight to the desk I would have got seats elsewhere.
Let me tell you about Air Niugini.
We flew out of Cairns to Port Moresby, but the flight was delayed by a few hours because Air Niugini wasn't allowed to fly in or out of Australia because their flight equipment wasn't up to the new international standard. They'd been given six months notice, but didn't do anything about it until one month before the deadline and the job was going to take five months. So one of the Australian charter companies was doing the Air Niugini flights in and out of Australia.
When we got to Moresby, we got off the plane and the door was locked to the terminal and the pilots were standing knocking on it to get someone to come and open it.
Later that year we flew from Moresby to Madang, on Air Niugini. We arrived about an hour early to check in, but got to check in and were told our flight was full, we would have to go on the next one.
Hmmm.... suddenly Australian airlines don;t seem so bad.
...I have to say I don't understand the problem? It sounds like, to me, that they only had one seat left at the $89 rate, you booked it... of course you wouldn't be able to book it again? I think I'm missing something.
The problems:
1. Had I booked two seats in one transaction it would have cost me $300 even though there was one $89 seat left. That is stupid. Price gouging.
2. If two people were making the booking simulataneously from different computers one would be gipped after the airline "offered" for contractual purposes a seat for $89. They then withdrew the offer in the process of it being accepted. That's ridiculous. Plus it's price gouging.
3. Fuel prices have come down but their prices haven't.
ah, but said airline now offers free headphones instead of having to pay $2 for them. Surely that is something...
Except that they no longer offer music to listen to. You either get to listen to ads or pay for the tv.
Entertaining for a two-year-old, but not a 28-year-old.
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