carlhaynes

A couple years ago I showed up in Manila for a Philippine Airlines flight after spending a week on a remote island with no phone and no way to reconfirm. Was told that my reservation had been cancelled and I was out of luck. After a little argueing I spent the next 12 hours in the middle seat of a packed plane flying back to San Francisco.

Last time I flew them I called to reconfirm and was told that I no longer need to reconfirm.

Savvy Traveler

I don't recommend that you ever fly Aero Continente, but if you do be sure to reconfirm.

simpleflyer

I'm with Boraxo on this one. My ticket money in the airlines' hands IS my confirmation. I'll submit to the concept of being bumped for overbooking when the airline overrefunds my money by 300 per cent.

FlyByNight

I arrived at the airport in Beijing a few years ago to find out that my flight to Xi'an had been cancelled. Was told that this wouldn't have happened if i had reconfirmed.

robb

I was flying BLR-SIN, transferring to UA in SIN (all one itinerary). While I suppose I can appreciate that the outbound flight might need reconfirmation, this was my return flight (I don't know if my TA reconfirmed my SIN-BLR flight or not, but nobody told me a word about this). It would seem that return flights would be less likely to be no showed.

B747-437B

Robb - if you read your AI ticket jacket, or the contract of carriage, or go to airindia.com, or visit any AI office worldwide, or read the AI paper timetable, or even listen to the "on-hold" recordings on the AI reservations line this requirement is stressed to you multiple times over. The PA announcements made after the arrival of every single flight also stress that "if you have onward reservations on an Air India flight, please reconfirm them at least 72 hours prior to departure". In 25 years of flying Air India, I've never heard them NOT reiterate that point.

The information is out there. Don't blame the airline for your failure to follow procedures that were very plainly and clearly spelled out.

robb

Sean, can you please point out where I blamed Air India for anything? Next, can you apologize for your condescending post?

I don't believe I ever had an Air India ticket jacket until my return flight. (why would I? I checked in on United) Nor did I ever have any reason to view an Air India time table or call Air India.

I had no reason to visit airindia.com and there is not a single person on flyertalk who reads the contract of carriage or visits an office to familiarize themselves with a new airline, so you are really stretching there.

Why on earth would I have done a single one of the things you act as if I were negligent in failing to do?

The only thing I can possibly imagine I might have missed was a single PA announcement on my inbound flight after 30 hours of travel. BTW, if the announcement was worded as you describe, I'm still not sure I would have realized it applied to me, as I had no onward reservations.

This is hardly a procedure "plainly and clearly" spelled out.

Obviously, my travel agent was to blame for failing to a) tell me about the need for reconfirmation, and b) for not just doing the reconfirmation for me.

However, I didn't have the slightest bit of trouble with anyone from Air India about the subject.

until now

EDITed for spelling

[This message has been edited by robb (edited 02-21-2003).]

robb

In fact, as I think about it more. It was Indian Airlines, not Air India.

The choice of carrier for this one leg was so trivial that I didn't even remember which airline it was, and you want me to drop by a ticket office to chat about policies??

B747-437B

Right where you say nobody told me a word about this. I was simply pointing out that Air India is NOT being negligent about educating people regarding this policy as you implied, but rather that you chose to ignore the information that is out there very prominently.

Air India does not have an interline checkin agreement with United, hence this could not be accurate.

Well, a vast majority of the 3.5 million passengers that AI transports annually seem to have no problem comprehending it.

If you can't even remember what carrier you were on, perhaps you should think a little harder before you start pointing fingers criticizing their policies.

robb

Seeing as how it was in the same sentence as "travel agent" you did an awful lot of overly sensitive guesswork to decide I had "implied" anything. Besides, what exactly would I be blaming them for?? I had no problems.

Then you give the weakest and most asinine list of reasons that I could imagine for why a passenger flying on a "subcontracted" carrier should be aware of these policies, instead of the only valid one "Your travel agent is supposed to tell you as an agent of the airline."

I'm still laughing about the prospect that you think a passenger should visit the ticket office of a remote, regional airline simply because you'll be on 1 round-trip segment with them, and just grab a cup of coffee and get a little briefing on all of the policies.

Maybe you should think a little harder before you start attacking people who were trying to have a calm, reasonable conversation about something a little quizzical that occurred.

richard

Whoa! Hold the phone! Let's stop this back and forth please and return to the thread subject.

Thanks!

--richard, moderator