FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Limbo is a place that exists with BA

Dec 6, 2022 | 8:03 am

#13

JAXBA

Join Date: Mar 2009

Location: JAX

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Posts: 3,755

Quote:

Originally Posted by Radiation Station

The OP asked to change to a flight they believed had availability. The agent attempted to do this. They could have been a bad agent but equally someone could have booked that seat in the time it took them to try and hold it.

This is all very unfortunate, but there is not necessarily any incompetence or bad faith on the part of BA. The OP had the options presented to them and chose to voluntarily change to a different cabin on another flight. BA isn’t on the hook for poor decision making by their customers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by checkerboard

As far as I've always understood it, when an agent opens a PNR (award, or revenue), they can add flights to the booking, and remove flights from the booking, in whatever order they choose. When a seat is "added" - it's no longer in the available inventory for others to grab. When a seat is removed, it's no longer available to be ticketed in the booking in question - and may, or may not, immediately, or in time, return to the inventory available for others to book from.

Of course, the change only becomes definitive once any additional fare (or taxes, or Avios) are collected, and the ticket associated with the reservation has been queued for (re)issue.

So, best practice, as I understand it, is:

a) Book the new flights, whilst keeping the old ones in the existing booking
b) Calculate the additional collection (if any), and confirm customer's consent to proceed
c) Process payment, reissue the ticket
d) Clean up the booking by removing un-needed sectors.

(C) comes before (D) precisely because sometimes credit cards fail. And in those odd cases - such a process won't leave a customer in Limbo.

Seems this isn't what happened for the OP. Not sure why some folks here seem to think the resultant Limbo is fine. It's not.

An agent can (and should) add the new space being requested before taking any out. There shouldn't be any reason to permanently remove old space while a change is being explored and priced.

Airline booking systems basically have two ways out of a PNR: <End> (save all changes) or <Ignore> (reset to last save). The <Ignore> (or <Ignore and Retrieve>

is a very useful function, as it allows you to edit the PNR in until a decision is made and confirmed with <End>.

Depending on how BA's scripts are currently working (and I haven't used them in 9 years now...), there were two possible safe paths this agent could have taken, and then a recovery path through a manager if they did indeed make a mistake. Sounds like they took the wrong path and then doubled down on their error.

How I would have made this change when I worked for BA:

a) Book the new flights
b) Temporarily take out the old flights
c) Calculate the additional collection (if any), and confirm customer's consent to proceed.
d) Process payment, reissue the ticket. <End, Issue Tkt, and Retrieve>

At any point up until the <End, Issue Tkt, and Retrieve> I could <Ignore and Retrieve> and restore the PNR back to how it was at the start of the call. Sometimes it's necessary to <End and Retrieve> before payment - but you do it with the customer's consent.

If confirmed space is taken out in error, then the agent would have to admit the mistake and ask management for help. It shouldn't have gone as wrong as it sounds like it did.

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