Aloha,

Has anyone else experienced an on-line booking being held to vanish prior to purchase? On Tuesday I booked a flight from ITO to LAX and choose the option to hold it. The wording next to "Click to hold reservation" says I have until 11:59pm 11/24/05 to purhase. Yet on 11/23 I tried to purchase it and the confirmation number was not valid. I communicated with their on-line web support and they said there was nothing they could do since it expired. The email confirming my held reservation also stated 11/24. They also admitted that they never ever honor the expired reservation even though it ended early. Needless to say I feel they have some obligation to the circumstance.

only option i see is to contact customer relations. perhaps it is too late however to be of use. fyi, i've probably held in excess of 100 ha reservations, and have never had a problem.

What website did you use?
What airline?
What time did you try to make the purchase?
(Usually times specified for holding are not local/Hawaii times).

Seeing how the individual is posting in the Hawaii Airlines forum and only Hawaiian Airlines allows holds on their website, my guess is that the OP was using Hawaiian to purchase tickets, which does allow holds till midnight Hawaiian Standard Time.

I too have held many reservations using the Hawaiian Airline system and never had a problem. Perhaps calling Customer Relations will see if someone physically cancelled your reservations. However, if you did put it on hold on Tuesday, it was only supposed to be held till Wednesday midnight HST, so perhaps the confirmation e-mail you received was incorrect?

Given Hawaiian's poor customer service reputation, I unfortunately don't think you'll be getting much out of this...

Mahalo for the comments. I asked the HA rep to follow-up. She was as helpful as she could be but I was struck by her comment when she said it happens often and there is nothing they could do about it. The website is contradictory; one box says 24 hours....another and an email gave me 2.5 days.

I shall remain consoled however by not being out of town for this and close to a full ice chest.

Just noticed, FYI

If one logs in on HA and holds a reservation:

CONTINUE RESERVATION TO HOLD Continue to next step. After confirmation, you will have until 12/1/2005, 11:59 PM HST to purchase


If one does not log in, same flights:

CONTINUE RESERVATION TO HOLD Continue to next step. After confirmation, you will have until 11/30/2005, 11:59 PM HST to purchase this reservation.

So you can log in, but with a full moon, sunspots, server issues, kona weather, etc. you might lose your res. before the hold period ends.