nina

I just read about this gripe on the other thread, and have always been curious about this. Sometimes, I wait to buy tickets because I'm not sure if my husband will be able to come with us. If he can't go, I'd like to be able to give the ticket to my mom.

Why can't you transfer them? I can see that it causes a little bit of paperwork, but go ahead and charge a nominal fee, like $25 or $50. Surely the cost of switching the name on the ticket and in the system can only be a fraction of that amount, and should be able to be completed in a matter of minutes. They could even but a deadline of a certain number of days prior to the flight to allow you to do this.

Why son't they allow this? Other than to force the purchase of a new ticket if your travel companion changes?

xxx

If every airline allowed people to transfer unused tickets to friends of theirs the airlines would be even more bankrupt than they are now.

xxx

Full Fare is transferable.

nina

Why? Especially if they charged a processing fee (which they could actually MAKE money from). I wish someone could explain how allowing transfers would banrupt an airline? A ticket is a ticket. If it costs a few bucks to change the name, then let them make a profit from that.

It doesn't seem right that if someone gets sick, or has to work, or can't use their ticket, that it has to be wasted and if you want to travel with someone else in their place a new ticket needs to be purchased.

nina

Yes, I understand that full fare is transferable. But who, other than last minute fliers or those on the company dime, is paying full fare? I don't know anyone who does.

Brad

I think it is obvious that if airlines allowed people to give away tickets this would cause selling which takes the industry right out of the hands of the airlines. They are on the brink of bankrupcy now not sure if they could handle further losses.

What I think is a bigger problem is when you don't get credit for trips you miss. I recently went to book a flight to New Zealand and had this problem. United Airlines told me if I cancelled I could only a 50% credit towards my next trip. They said this was a new policy for the route.

DeeDee

Nina, you pay full fare to be able to transfer or have it refunded.

xxx

Brad brings up a good point. People would just be scalping plane tickets. As for the bankrupt theories, airlines need revenue. If you buy a $200 ticket and eat it, they're up $200. If you pay $50 to transfer it and now someone fills that seat AND the plane is over booked, their revenue is -$150, relative to you eating the $200 and them being able to fill the seat. Thus, as long as they are able to fill that seat with another passenger who might have been bumped if you showed up, it makes financial sense for them to make the cheapest fares non-transferable.

nina

OK, it never occured to me that people would sell the tickets. I was just thinking of giving them to someone else to travel with you.

Well, if they won't allow that, then they should allow you to pay a fee and give you credit for a future flight.

Maybe if some airline thought more about customer service they would actually gain a larger market share, and some loyalty. What a concept, be the first airline to actually think of the customer first and allow ticket transfers to family members or to be given credit for the flight to be used on another.

Improved customer service worked for JetBlue, maybe some of these other struggling airlines ought to give it a shot.

scalp.

Ok, it's late in the day, I'm tired, and I'm not making the connection: Why would scalping tickets hurt the airlines? It doesn't hurt sports teams.

I mean, if someone paid $300 for a ticket and then sold it to someone else for X dollars, the airline still makes the $300. Now, if you're saying that the airlines count on paid no-shows to turn a profit, I guess I understand that. But that doesn't seem to be in the explanations so far.

nina

Good point Scalp! Yeah, how about it? Why would the airlines care who uses the ticket so long as they get the money they charged for it???

x

ok once more, the reason they would care is because the business gets taken out of their hands.

When only they are selling tickets they get more control and more cash. Remember if you bought your ticket at discount prices maybe early, you later decide not to go well, we all know what happens to seats bought at the last minute, they sky rocket in price giving the airlines more money. Opening up tickets for transfer, scalping whatever you want to call it makes all of this possible.

x

scalping makes all of this impossible

nina

I think I get it. So then the airlines are counting on last minute cancellations and no shows as big profit centers for them, correct?

x

they are counting on everything including those rediculous change fees, current jacked up fares, stop over charges etc.

Are they due, I am not an economist. I do worry about more damage that would take us to the days when only very wealthy people traveled.

The

It seems the airlines is the only industry where you can buy a ticket, and if for some unfortunate reason you can't use it, you can't get a refund, you can't resell it, you can't redeem it for a future ticket, or can't get credit. Wow. I can't think of a single other situation where the customer gets so royally screwed.

scalp

(I hope this discussion stays on the civil level. I'll try my best to keep it that way.)

The idea of "taking the business out of their hands" seems nebulous at best. It's already taken out of their hands when when wholesaling travel agents buy up blocks of tickets at a discount and then sell them to customers. You can call that what you want, but in my book it's scalping.

But I will buy x's explanation (which is what I first asked about) that airlines count on paid no-shows so that they can sell the seat twice.

Which leads me to a hypothetical question: Suppose I had a ticket for a Boston-Orlando flight that stopped in NY. And suppose I was visiting my Aunt Minnie in NY and decided that instead of driving back to Boston, I'll just stay in NY and pick up the flight at that leg. Do they have to give me the seat?

I think I know the answer, but all I've ever seen on this is that you can't get OFF at the interim stop, but nothing about getting ON there.

x

When you see airfares to Hawaii for over $1000 on a regular basis, no refund even of credit as mentioned above you gotta be a little worried. YUCK can you imagine if United goes belly up and American is the leader, no more competition, I mean real competition they way AA and UAL use to go at it. I miss those days of cheapo travel, kind of gives me a warm moment. Wasn't that much different than the Virgin/British Airways battle. We all benefited.

x

scalp if you have been watching the airlines as I have over the years you will notice that the wholesale travel agents are all but disappearing.

Orbitz is one of the clearest examples of this. Still even when they did allow for wholesalers they could pick and choose who they did business with. The larger argument though is still that this type of business has slowed considerably. So the message I got from this is that they want to hold the golden eggs.

P.S yes you can't get on unless you started the flight from the get go. Yes this is thier way of screwing you. I just don't know how much we can complain at the moment they seem to be in so much trouble.

scalp

I think anyone who says airline tickets are expensive shows a lack of perspective.

Compared to what? In the 1970s, I bought a house in the D.C. suburbs for $55K. I bet that house goes for at least $300K now -- a 600% increase. Gasoline in 1974: 65 cents/gallon. Today: $1.45 -- 115% increase. In 1974, I bought a round-trip ticket to Vegas for $350. Today, if I hunt around, I can find a ticket for the same price.

I disagree about price. I think air travel is a bargain (though the service rots).