PTahCha

Well, if you bought a sandwich, you owe them more than $4. None of the sandwiches/wraps are less than $8.99.

redheadtempe33

I actually find it nice that you care (seriously).

Short answer, UA (or most airlines) do not get auth's mid flight. They do it once they have landed, and it can be hours after the flight depending on the FA, aircraft turnaround, etc.

I don't want to encourage customers to rip off airlines but realistically, if your card has a magnetic stripe, it will be approved (in flight). I know for high-end duty free purchases, FA's have the option to "call it in" via radio, but I doubt it ever happens.

I personally know of an employee of an airline who had a pre-paid Visa card (not gift) who was able to use it for a large amount of in-flight food, liquor, and movies despite have a $0 balance.

They eventually caught him, but I can tell you there isn't (that I know of) a way of tracking this (one offs) currently.

STS-134

They'd better encrypt that transmission, otherwise, they're going to be on the receiving end of a lawsuit.

Simplest way is to just take cash. Next is to do the authorizations in real time, with the system they have now as a backup, just in case the connection to the bank's servers goes down. At least passengers wouldn't be able to assume that they can get away with it if most of the time, the $0 balance gets caught immediately and they get told to use another card.

Actually, there is a far simpler way to do this. Stop charging for things that should be free (like in flight food).

username

I have always wondered what happens when this kind of thing happen. Even with real time authorization, we still have all the fraud. My guess is that the new tablet device is going to eventually do real time authorization. The amount of data is probably very small and won't impact the load on the satellite link.

redheadtempe33

I should add, my experience comes from several years ago. Perhaps with on board wi-fi things have changed, but no airline that I know of has 100% coverage (including express) so I doubt it.

Some airlines (apparently not UA) exclude gift cards for this very reason (and yes, even if it is a Visa gift card, they know by the 1st 4 digits what kind of card it is)

Also, they do try to resubmit later, so unless it is a "burner" card ...

Wx4caster

Indeed - my last flight was end of June, and the sandwich I bought just hit my account last week!

MSPeconomist

Wouldn't it be easier to call them, probably ask for a supervisor, and be prepared to give them a credit card number over the phone or alternatively tell them to use the credit card associated with your UA FF account?

MSPeconomist

Don't UMs often travel with Visa gift cards for onboard and airport purchases rather than credit or debit cards?

xliioper

DL flight attendants use Lumia 820's that are wifi and AT&T LTE enabled. They say they do "near real-time" credit card auth's and accept prepaid credit cards. I suspect this means they will try the auth while still in the air over wifi. DL domestic mainline is 100% wifi equipped and international is close. The domestic aircraft use ground-based GoGo, so there will be areas with no service when they make international flights/fly over oceans/etc.

kenn0223

Two thoughts:

1. UA does (or at least did) have a black list of card numbers. I once had a credit card that I used in flight, landed to a voicemail from my bank about suspected fraud (not UA related), didn't call the bank back until the next day and one of the transactions they read off that they decided was the UA transaction. Fast forward several months when I tried to use the card again and the FA said the machine wouldn't take it and showed me a "Card Declined" message on the machine. I haven't been able to use that card since on board.

2. Overall UA likely loses far less since they switched from cash to credit cards only. I suspect there were quite a few sticky fingers along the way from the passenger's wallet to UA's bank account. Going from a 80% collectible rate to a 95% collectible rate is still pretty good. Also, based on the way I've seen FAs offer up free liquor it still does not appear to be that tight of inventory control.

jhayes_1780

I will echo ^ for trying to make this right.

I really doubt UA has a mechanism to chase 4.00 from a disposable gift card (does BoB even track seat #'s?).

But IMhO: stay on the good side of karma.... send $5.00 to the local food bank/shelter/soup kitchen.

physioprof

Or OP could tear up a UA drink voucher and call it even.

denuaflier

Thanks for the morning smile

EmailKid

Good luck with that. They don't take cash.

A person next to me paid me more than value of drink chits because they were so desperate to get a drink (and I was actually willing to sell UNDER because they were about to expire).

+1

drewguy

The time lag still may be too much.

That said, having it process during flight, which would allow FA to go back to seat, would probably be able to address 90% of situations (the 10% being seat swappers and people without an alternative form of payment).