Originally Posted by
Sunfish
I am travelling to Asia and Europe on separate holidays in the next few months. I am travelling business class and I have a web of hotels, tours, trains and internal flights booked.
I have some protection via travel insurance, but. my reaction to the practice of overbooking is unprintable.
It would be far better in my opinion to stop overbooking and instead enforce financial penalties (i.e. no refund) for no shows, require people to take out travel insurance and let the insurance companies deal with the matter.
I note in passing that the ACCC is already investigating airlines for the practice of charging allegedly ridiculous fees for changing flights, etc. that bear no relationship to the cost (if any) of the change.
To put that another way, inflexible fares sometimes allow an airline to profit by charging twice for the same seat on the same flight. Overbooking is unnecessary..
You really cannot complain about charging for changing a ticket while at the same time wanting to charge more to stop overbooking!?
I remember years ago a huge percentage of suits would book both QF and United from LA to Sydney and decide which one to use at the last minute. You cannot expect airlines to continually go with 20% or more empty seats because of this and still allow you to change flights willy nilly.
I agree with financial penalties for all sorts of things, how about charging late pax for delays when they get lost in the shopping centre between checkin and the aircraft? ($1000 a minute might get their attention)
I can increasingly see the attraction of freight!