Originally Posted by
Ben Smith
We have listened to many of the various suggestions from this board and over the past few months when appropriate have instituted several ideas that came directly from FT members.
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But not the very simple minor fix of adding Singapore to the list of countries to enable booking and payment for tickets online !
First, on the substantive topic, the absence of Singapore cannot be a risk management issue because:
(i) cardholder authentication for credit card payments online is actually handled by the card networks / card issuers / payment gateways -- not AC.
(ii) Singapore (with a disproportionately high number of elite credit card users) is surely a better general country-risk than some of the dodgy places that are on the approved list
Moreover, the fact that AC does not fly to Singapore is irrelevant.
I am not aware of any other major airline selling tickets online for a domestic or international flight from A to B that prevents online purchase by customers with address in country C or credit card issued in Country C simply because the airline does not have other flights to/from country C.
Second, on the administrative topic, I have made multiple requests over the course of at least 5 years (via telephone as well as here on FlyerTalk) for your IT department to simply add Singapore to the drop-down box ... but this simple adjustment has still not been done.
For comparison, I informed Qantas of a spelling error for a Chinese city on a similar website drop-down list, and within a few days that simple line item was corrected.
How hard is it for AC to add Singapore to the website country list?
Frankly, we are currently looking at purchasing tickets for two pax plus infant in business or first class from Asia to Canada for travel in JAN-MAR. It is so inconvenient to make this purchase with AC -- as it is still not possible to do so online -- that we naturally will make this and other transpacific bookings on CX.
So AC's failure to make the minor investment of perhaps a few minutes by IT staff has a clear cost on the order of at least $10K in forgone revenue from just one ticket by one customer with address in Singapore or credit card issued in Singapore.
Whether or not AC flies into Singapore, imagine how much revenue is being foolishly lost by not enabling Singapore-based business or leisure travellers to conveniently book online for transpacific flights and onward connections in Canada.