canadiancow

That's stupid.

During EYW, I've held multiple bookings for the same origin/destination/date on single PNRs.

It would never hold up in any court since there are legitimate reasons to fly back and forth.

ChrisA330

My interpretation or the actual tariff?

yyznomad

Tariff.

Yhztraveller

I have done a number of EYW runs where I had multiple flights to-from the same cities in a given day. I am sure that @canadiancow and the rest of the EYW gang would have reported a problem if AC had an issue with this.

edit: Lol, I guess I should read the entire thread before commenting.....

BarrieTravelGuy

Funny timing for me on seeing this thread. A couple of weeks I booked a return YYZ/BOS flight with my flight pass. It was a Tues departure coming home Thursday. I then had to do a last minute international trip leaving on the Monday and coming back on the Thursday. I booked a Premium Economy Flexible fare. I hadn't gotten a chance to cancel the flight pass flights as you can't do it in the app anymore due to a bug. This morning I woke up to find my International trip cancelled. I called the SE Desk and the lady said they cancelled it due to "Duplicate booking". It conflicted with my BOS flights. Interesting that they cancelled the expensive international flight vs. the flight pass ones. More interesting that they didn't even notify me. I only knew because it went missing from the AC App. No email. No phone call. You would think as an SE on an international flight coming in up a couple of days they might give me the heads up.

canopus27

That's insane.

Argonaut1000

Were you able to get the flights reinstated as originally booked?

BarrieTravelGuy

I was... it took over 2 hours but the woman who was an agent from Saint John, NB said he wouldn't give up. There was no more R space. So after she got the ticket re-issued she called multiple people until she could clear my upgrade again so I didn't have to wait until the gate. She apologized and said she had seen this multiple times since the implementation of the new system. She wasn't sure if it was proactively looking for things like this in the background - but she's seen more of these issues in the last 2 months then her entire career.

canadiancow

To be fair, you did violate the tariff with the booking.

I don't think they handled it as well as they could have (a phone call would have been better), you were holding refundable tickets on two overlapping flights.

That being said, I appreciate how many issues there are right now, so I don't think they should turn on this auto-cancel feature yet.

But I expect this type of automated revenue integrity check to become a lot more common.

Adam Smith

Agreed. I just made an Aeroplan booking that conflicts with an FP booking I already had. I would happily cancel the FP booking, but I can't do that with the app or online right now, and I don't have time to phone in at the moment. If they cancel the Aeroplan booking, which was a huge pain and involved forcing open some revenue space due to SKCH, I would be extremely unhappy.

Adam Smith

Well, I have to say I'm less than impressed with AC. I just got a notification from the app that both of my conflicting bookings were modified. One is YYC-IAH-LIR, the other is YYC-LAS (IAH-LIR and YYC-LAS conflict).

Looks like they didn't actually modify the LIR booking, but the YYC-LAS booking has been cancelled altogether. But without any notice or communication from AC - no phone call, no e-mail, nothing. Just the little notification from the app popping up. If they want to start flagging these things and have someone follow up, that's fine, but to simply decide to cancel one booking of their choosing is highly inappropriate.

These conflicting bookings do not actually contravene the terms of the tariff, since they are not for the same flight or same origin/destination pairing.

canadiancow

Back to what I said before, I actually wouldn't have an issue with this if there were an X day grace period (where X is 7-14), and you could actually reach an agent. If the reason you haven't cancelled the old booking is that you can't get through, this really sucks.

But regardless of whether they contravene the letter of the tariff, I suspect they contravene the spirit. You're holding two seats when you can't possibly use both.

Adam Smith

In my case, with SE priority, I'm sure I could have gotten through, but I also didn't want to cancel the LAS thing just in case. I was actually going to cancel it using the app, but of course that isn't working these days. It's a Latitude FP, so good chance I can get it back if I need it, but still.

Pretty hard to discern the spirit of the tariff, since there's no governing principle or anything like that spelled out, and it definitely doesn't contravene the letter.

I'd also point out that AC charges a substantial premium for flexible fares, and also frequently oversells flights, in the knowledge that many flexible tickets will be cancelled or changed. So they would be talking out both sides of their mouth to some extent.

canadiancow

On one hand, I agree.

On the other, what if you booked full Y/O/J on every flight AC has scheduled in 2020.

And then 3 hours before departure, you cancel any you aren't going to take.

Is that acceptable? If yes, then we fundamentally disagree. If no, then where's the line?

I think the line might be well beyond "I have two potential trips but I'm not sure which one I want to take", but UA went after someone holding the same flight every day for a week, and I personally think that crosses the line.

Adam Smith

I think we can agree that there's a point where it's no longer acceptable, such as booking Y/O/J in every flight in a calendar year.

But I don't think having only two conflicting reservations - which don't actually violate the tariffs - crosses that line. And I still don't think AC should just be cancelling them without any kind of notification, especially for someone who has SE status. And I think it was only 24 or 36 hours or so after making the second booking that they cancelled the first one.