I understand about falling profit margins that has happened in all industries. What i am getting at is no where can i see any mention of having to book in before your flight. All im asking is for the thing i paid for to be mine. Why would i book a flight if i was not going to take it?
Sure there maybe times when someone books a flight and can not make the flight for personal reasons but in that case all that should happen is the person next to them gets more leg room. If i wanted to book a flight to Tokyo for next week and have no intention of getting on it that is my problem a company should not be allowed to sell something they have already sold to me.
Now if somewhere in the small print they had said you have to book in online or call in to register your ticket a day before the flight i would have called in(bad internect connection in the corner of latvia i was in) but the was no mention and then to sell my flight and not give me a refund but to make me wait overnight, nope im not impressed and i can not belive this is legal.
For sure not everyone who works for an airline is bad and i did not mean to offend you crawley, i was actually fairly pleasant to the staff at the gate because i did not think they had anything to do with it and they seemed a little scared of me. Im rather tall and broad shoulders and speak like ray winstone.
OK. What you have to accept here is they have not got rid of "your seat" because you did not check-in online. Because, even if you had not checked-in, the seat would still be there, no?
Think back to the days before online check-in.......everyone turned up at the airport, joined a queue, and got a boarding card with a seat number, right? Only difference is you can get your boarding card early and avoid the queues now.
This is what happened.............
ALL airlines flying scheduled services, all over the world, sell tickets for the various class of travel you choose (First, Business, Economy etc) but sell the tickets at different rates.
What this means is, the more you pay for a ticket, the greater your flexibility when you need to change the flight or cancel the booking. So, example (NOT real figures):
Passenger A pays £25 for an economy class ticket to Paris. He is restricted to THAT flight, on THAT day, at THAT time, and if he decides not to travel, is unlikely to get a refund.
Passenger B pays £100, also for economy class, but may, for a small fee, be allowed to switch days or flights, and may get majority of refund if he doesn't travel.
Passenger C pays £250, still for economy, but can switch flights/days even airlines at will, and will receive full refund if he cancels.
All these people have opted to travel in the same class, but it is the flexibility of their ticket that matters to the individual.
Now, imagine, with all the flights across the world, on each day of the week, how many people do actually change/cancel/miss flights............thousands.
Every airline has, within it's reservation department, a section that studies trends (for want of a better word), that encompasses every flight, on every day of the year, for that particular airline.
What they are looking for is the number of booked passengers who do not travel despite holding a booking (known as No-shows). Obviously, depending on routes, days, times and destinations, these figures vary greatly. In my time on passenger services in the past, I have seen flights have as many as 70 people "no-show" for a flight.
Now, just think, if all 70 of those held fully refundable tickets, and opted to take the refund...........that airline has just flown a sector with 70 empty seats, and will not be making any money from it as a result.
So, the section studying this, builds a picture over time of the likely percentage of "no-shows" on each and every flight, and then sets a figure for that flight that the reservations section may "over-sell" by. In other words, they sell more tickets than seats available due to the expected number of no-shows.
This is done to ensure they are getting maximum revenue for each seat (profits are so tight now, they need load-factors of over 90% to make anything on a flight).
Once again, in my time, I have seen flights "over-booked" by as many as 60-70 people. And guess what? It still went with empty seats.
Of course, the downside here, is it can, and does backfire. And this, Chich, is what I guess happened to you. Because I doubt very much there is a rule that says you HAVE to check-in online.
By the time you reached your transfer point, it sounds like everyone had already checked in for that flight, including oversales (remember, it's not YOUR seat until you have sat in it). As such, you were sent to the gate on "stand-by" in the hope that someone would "no-show" and free up another seat. Obviously, it didn't work this time.
(One of the biggest pains for airlines now is the number of people who check-in online, taking a seat, and still don't turn up for the flight. Causes loads of disruption).
If you have paid a particularly low fare, your options will be limited, but you should still be re-booked onto something, and given some type of compensation. You need to ask what exactly went on and push for this. But everything points to what I have typed above.
I'm a fan of the Branson as well.
