I just had a rather distrubing experience with USAir's Personal Travelworks, their on-line booking system. I puchased a ticket in February from BOS-PIT, and all went smoothly; I even received a paper itinerary and receipt for an e-ticket, which on-line I was informed I would not receive.

Today--the day of the flight--I checked on the USAir WWW site to confirm the departure time. I discovered that it had been moved back by 30 min. Worse, the return was cancelled entirely. These changes occurred MARCH 14--6+ weeks ago.

I called USAir, and was informed that had I made the reservation directly with them (by telephone), I would have been informed of these changes, but that since I had gone through a travel agent it was the agent's responsibility to pass along information about changes. In my view, since Personal Travelworks represents an exclusive agreement between USAir and a given agency--which uses USAir seals, etc.--that USAir should ensure that the same standard applies there as well, especially since by using the service I am in fact SAVING USAir money. USAir had no response to this position.

Fortunately, this travel is personal, so a half-hour delay (while annoying) is manageable (another half hour in the office!), and I was automaticaly rebooked on another return flight which departs only 10 minutes after the first. However, the principle stands--if an airline chooses to have an exclusive agreement with a particular vendor, they should ensure that the vendor in question adheres to certain minimum levels of customer service.

As for me? I'm going back to my real, live travel agent. When there's a problem, I'll take a person who is willing to work for my repeat business over an impersonal WWW service or reservations agent who KNOWS that I will continue to fly USAir because they run the only non-stop flight (barring Eastwind airlines, which still has some scheduling glitches) on that route.

Has anyone else had similar experiences, either with Personal Travelworks or other on-line providers?

So basically USAirways is saying that the reason the Travel Agents get commission is to take the responsibility for such things away from the airline and place them with the Travel Agent.

It sounds like the problem lies with whoever runs Personal Travelworks for USAirways (and USAirways probably pays them a commission, so I'm not sure how much money USAirways is really saving, though I'd be inclined to believe that USAirways is paying some sort of discounted commission for the right to be the "official" booker on their website). You would think that USAirways would demand that the company running their booking service would provide their customer with some minimum level of service in cases like this.

What really piques my interest about this is how other airlines handle this situation. I know that when a flight I'm on gets cancelled or the schedule chages significantly with Delta, they tell me/rebook me as appropriate, even if I bought the ticket through a travel agent. However, I don't know if this is their standard practice for all customers or just elite level FF's.

FYI, Personal TravelWorks is really a "co-branded" version of Travelocity (as is Yahoo Travel).

silverpie ~ That's what I kind of figured. It seems most of the airlines work that way. UA uses ITN.net and I believe NW and CO both use Expedia (though I hardly ever visit, so I may be wrong about that).

AA obviously uses Sabre/Travelocity or something like that since they own 'em.

I think DL operates their own site without any co-branding, at least I've yet to see any indication that it's really run by someone else.

Southwest operates their own too it looks like ...