Mary2Go

Thanks! I guess I don't have to worry about being taken away in chains or anything!!!

gracieb

Amazing story, TxTravelPro! Do you have the link to the story? I'd like to email it to my brother.

TxTravelPro

Here's a link to the first story...

http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/sept97/0134.html

This is a link to the second story.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/business...siness-indepth

k_999_9

I read the Baltimore Sun piece and part of it outraged me:

>>In February, for instance, Katun Corp., a Minnesota seller of office equipment, pleaded guilty to 12 counts of fraud and agreed to pay $11 million in fines and restitution.

The U.S. attorney in Minnesota charged that the company routinely booked cheap tickets from 1994 to 2000, then used "fraudulent manipulation of various airlines' reservations and ticketing systems" to change return dates without incurring a penalty.

When gate agents detected discrepancies, Katun employees lied about the reason for the earlier return, the U.S. attorney's office said.<<

Since when it is a crime to lie to a gate agent? Yeah, yeah, I know it's wrong if it involves security or something like that, but doesn't appear to be the case here.

It appears this company figured out how to manipulate the airlines confusing fare rules, and got hammered for it. Why? I know legal cases are more complicated than they appear, but this one looks dumb.

jasper

i work for an international airline. yes, they have ways of tracking it, easily. yes, it is theft.

AAFrequentFlyer

jasper,

I don't think anybody is saying that the airlnes don't have a way to track this type of activity, but there is really nothing they can do to an individual if s/he does this once or twice.

Patrick

I don't mean to sound rude, but this continuing question suggesting that somehow the airline is going to "do" something about your not returning just seems so funny to me. I'm curious what people think could POSSIBLY happen?

1) The airline police come to your home and arrest you for not using your return?
2) They bill you some sort of fine on your credit card because you "missed" your return flight? Pretty hard to imagine.
3) Your name goes into a computer and they never let you fly that airline again?
4) Your name is passed on to other airlines to go on a special list headed, "watch out for this cheater".
5) They seek you out on that day, abduct you and force you to take your scheduled flight?

The bottom line is, there are a dozen reasons a person may not use the return portion of a round-trip flight. There is NOTHING the airline can or will do about it.

jasper

aa...that is true. i suppose it's just designed for travel agency abuse. maybe not so much for the odd one-off traveler. for instance, if a travel agency gets caught, the airline can take away the technical rights on that agent from ticketing on that airline. however, part of my job is to collect on invoices that go to a travel agent when they do something like this. if that is not sucessfull, it goes to a collection agency.

Austin

This may have been mentioned, but it's possible also that because you are intentially not going to do the return, they are losing money (ahem) because their records show that seat is taken and it is not - and they could have sold it.

Yes, they over book, but maybe that is their point. Kinda like missing the Dr. appointment (with less than 24 hr. notice) and being charged...

AAFrequentFlyer

Austin,

It has nothing to do with the seat going empty and the airline loosing money. For instances, if the flight is oversold and you don't show up on time for the required check-in, your seat will be given to the next person, so in essence, the airline did sell the seat.

The R/T restrictions are there to protect the different fares the airlines offer. I already explained this in other threads, but basically a one-way fare could only be 1/2 of the full non restrictive fare. Most other fares are less than 1/2 of the full fare, so in order to protect the full fare, airlines put themselves in this catch-22 proposition. Thus the fare rule, (NOT A LAW) that you have to use the return. The airlines are able to control and enforce back-to-back ticketing and to some extend hidden city rules, but it's impossible for them to enforce the throw away ticketing when it's done by individual on occasion. As I already explained in an earlier post above, it is possible and it has been done with travel agencies and especially corporate travel agencies, but I have yet to actually personally witness a case when enforcement and punishment occured when it was an individual doing the throw away of a return flight, although you will hear stories about a friend of a friend said that......

k_999_9

Not buying the "missed Dr, appointment" analogy.

I paid for the appointment (ticket). If I don't want to show up, that's my business.

Patrick

Here's another thing. Several months ago I booked two one-way tickets from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on American (at $59 each). Now we've changed our dates and can't use them. They cost $100 each to change, but we could buy new tickets for $69 each. They can't be exchanged, refunded, or given to anyone else. So what's the deal? Are we to call them and say we won't use them so they can resell them even though they won't give us any credit for it? It's the airlines fault for making so many restrictions that it doesn't pay the customer to let them know he won't be using the ticket. Obviously the airline must not be too concerned with no-shows or re-selling the seat.

And what's this reference to a no-show for a return flight "costing" the airlines if they can't resell the seat? They haven't lost anything, because they've already collected their money for that seat. Even if it sits empty, they've still made just as much money as if someone was sitting there.

lenleigh

The airlines definitly need to make some changes. On Airline recently, there was one guy that was making the same complaint as Patrick about having to change his flight and paying more. They eventually just changed it for him with no charge.

All airlines should stop issuing paper tickets (so there's no nonsense about loosing your ticket and having to buy another). They need to revamp their ticketing laws (a one-way should really be half of your roundtrip and not more). Etc...

AAFrequentFlyer

lenleigh,

One more time folks.....

One-way ticket IS 1/2 of a FULL-FARE ticket. If it was anything less, then the airline would never be able to sell the expensive FULL FARE ticket that comes without restrictions. One-way ticket can't be 1/2 of the discounted fare because everybody would be buying one-way tickets to avoid the restrictions that come with discounted tickets.

here_today_gone2Maui

AAFF-- we could add to that:
...except for Southwest who somehow manages to offer a one-way fare that is half of it's RT fare, at each offered price level.

AAFrequentFlyer

I didn't say that this was a good system, I was just trying to explain it.

Also, try to remember that the majors fly internationaly so they compete against many international airlines and if and when some of these internationals decide to change their fare system the US majors have to play this fare game, whether they like it or not.

TxTravelPro

I only fly AA. I have booked a couple of hidden city tickets.
A guy I work with worked on the design team that created the tracking system in Sabre that can detect irregular travel patterns by FF number.
Whether it is true or not, I feel like I am risking my considerable AA miles by cheating. I would have to read the book they send once a year to see if it addresses these issues.
Also, the person at my company that negotiates the discounted fares with AA is MORTIFIED when someone does this... so there is some corporate pressure to be honest.
So I never did it again.
No FF #, no way to track it back to me.
Buying on the web? Who the heck cares!
Bill my credit card, I will dispute.

clarkgriswold

The airlines will get their as**s sued if they ever try to enforce this crappola.

If you buy a shirt and cut off the sleeves, is the store is entitled to send you a bill since the sleeveless ones were more expensive? Or FORCE you to buy a sleeveless shirt?

HOGWASH !

clarkgriswold

These bozos can't even figure out how many pillows they're gonna need on a full flight....and you think they're gonna sit down and track all of the people that haven't used the 2nd half of their tickets???? Just who are they gonna hire to do this, the people in India who are now taking the reservations????

GoTravel

clark, you cannot sue the airlines for this practice because when you purchase the ticket, you agree to the terms and conditions of the airline.

Why is it that when an airline has an unpopular or odd practice, someone always screams lawsuit?

clarkgriswold, I'm not pointing a finger at you in particular. A while back there was a thread about airplanes not being ADA complient and someone insisted they were going to be sued. Can you imagine the cost of trying to make all airplanes wheelchair friendly. Airplanes are exempt from this.

On another thread, an asmatic child's mother happened to be a lawyer and this child was allergic to pet dander.

There was a dog in First Class. Mother threatened law suit if the dog wasn't removed from the plane. Mother was quite nasty to gate agent.

Pilot decided child would be risk to flight crew (if the child had a allergic reaction, he could die without oxegyn and the flight crew would have to ignore other passengers while taking care of child) and pilot and first officer decided to remove child and mother from flight.

Litigous mother didn't have a legal leg to stand on. According to terms and agreement of airlines, you are not guaranteed flying by purchasing seat.