p3t3rmax

I'm an expat (and a forum newbie and hoping this is the right spot for this) from South Africa working in South Korea and my employer (They have a Carlson Wagonlit agent in the office) booked a return flight for my wife in November from Cape Town via Singapore to Incheon (Seoul) on Singapore Air. The return was booked for 4 January but was waitlisted because of no availability. I'm so used to having the flights always confirmed and forgot about the waitlisting. There was place on the first leg from Incheon to Singapore but at checkin at Incheon they told my wife the Singapore-Cape Town leg was full but still accepted her for the flight. She got to Singapore and the flight was too full so she was made to purchase a return ticket back to Incheon as the next flight in two days time was full too. She got back quite traumatised, the staff were pretty unhelpful and just dumped her in Singapore without offering her any assistance like access to a transit lounge or anything. Some people in the travel industry have said that Singapore Air were never supposed to accept her for the flight in the first place, secondly being in transit she was the responsibility of Singapore Air and they should have made every effort to get her home, even to the extent of getting her onto another carrier if necessary. What sayest the horouble forum? I put a complaint letter on their website but their response was that they explained that the flight was full and it was the passenger's responsibility to decide whether to go or not. Between the two of us we done this trip about twenty times and havwe always been happy with them but this leaves a rather bitter tate in the mouth. I accept the fact that we made a mistake in not confirming the flight but just felt their handling of the situation was a bit out of order too.
Regards
Peter

Guy Betsy

Welcome to FlyerTalk.

But this forum is not for you to vent your frustrations about SQ. But since this is your first post, I guess you can be forgiven. In all fairness, you should be blaming your TA about this because they failed to advise your wife and you of the waitlist situation. And you should also have checked.

Whether you are familair that flights are full or not, you should always check when you receive the e-ticket receipt otherwise you will never know .. like this situation.

SQ probably advised you that the flight from SIN to CPT was full and that they can carry her to SIN but she might have to wait at SIN for the connection. It is unclear if you insisted her to be flown and to take a chance at being won standby for the onward journey or that SQ in ICN made the decision for you. If you had accepted the former, then the onus would be on your wife to be responsible for the outbound from SIN.

Ok so the flight is now overbooked. Well, SQ would have tried to get your wife onwards to the next available flight whether to CPT or JNB. But accomodation and costs would be borned by you. I guess at that point, your wife thought it might be better for her to return to ICN instead of hanging around in SIN, and yes, it is not up to SQ to provide accomodation. They may offer suggestions, but they are not entirely responsible.

There is a transit lounge. It's called the airport. The whole airport is very comfortable and there are areas to wait. But unless you have Star Alliance Gold status, you won't be allowed the Premium lounge. But the SIN airport is hardly just any old airport. So I am sure that there are staff around to assist in one way or another.

Again, flights may be full.. But your 'people in the travel industry' should have known better. It is still up to your travel agency to 'push' the waitlist through. Especially once SQ knows that the ticket has already been issued, the sales dept will try the utmost best to clear the waitlist. But it sounds as though your TA issued the ticket and either forgot about it or couldn't be bothered to check the waitilst through SQ sales department.

As someone in the travel industry for 20 years, I do know that the responsibility lies with your TA!

We are truly sorry about the muck up.. but SQ would have given your wife the choice. Either sit it out in SIN, or she could just return to ICN but she'd have to buy her own ticket as it is not up to SQ to give her a new ticket.

But at that point - you should have consulted your TA as to what they should do. Once you make your decision as to what you wanted to do, ie return to ICN, it sort of messes things up even more.

globetrekker84

Sounds like the TA holds the blame here.

Welcome to FT. Also, try to use the return key. Giant one-paragraph posts are hard to read.