One of my colleagues traveled to China on Air Canada with 4 family members, and upon checkin for the return flight with Air Canada was told they could not return on August 26 because there were no seats. He was finally able to return Sept 4, and some of his family are returning on Sept 8. His invoice from the travel agent indicates their return booking was August 26, but Air Canada says they had no record of his return. Air Canada told him he needed to check every day with them to get a seat, which he did, but to no avail. He finally obtained a seat when he told the agent he was going to protest in front of the Air Canada ticket office and perhaps be arrested in China for protesting. Before he did this, he told them he was going to go to the US embassy and tell them of his plans.

How can something like this happen? What recourse does he have?

I guess the question is where did your colleague purchase his ticket from, and did he actually have tickets that had the "HK" designator on them? [An invoice is not a ticket.] Was there a reconfirmation requirement? Could he not have called the travel agency that provided the tickets to intervene on his behalf? [Obviously he contacted you.] It is techically the Travel Agency's responsibility to ensure the passenger they have booked actually has seats on a given flight. I suppose I sound like an appologist for Air Canada, but you haven't provided enough information to make any other informed comment.

I stopped using travel agents many years ago and this was one of the reasons. On multiple occasions, I've been given tickets with the desired flight information printed on them but the reservations made, in error, for different dates. I never have this problem dealing directly with the airlines.

After Burner's comments...ditto.

1D

an Amex agent once told me "if the IATA coupon has OK on it, you're OK". I've always checked that on the coupon when i've purchased from TA's i'm not familiar with

Frequent flyer colleagues-thanks for your input about my colleague being stranded in China. I'll share your thoughts with him.

When he came by my office yesterday, he did not have his AC ticket stub nor his AC boarding passes with him, so I couldn't tell what the code was on his return ticket.