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Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

Finding a flight is also a frustrating experience for users right now. Airlines are selling tickets for destinations, which if you look at historical data, they haven't flown to for 6 months. If you buy a ticket, your flight gets cancelled and you end up spending the next weeks jumping hoops and waiting for your money to be refunded (and assuming you bought it in a jurisdiction that mandates refunds).

Advice: if the airline isn't flying to this destination this week, if you can't see the flight on the airport's online arrival boards or on flight tracking websites, don't buy the ticket, the flight is likely fictitious.

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I've been going through this these past two weeks in Europe. I just need to do two short flights, one of them between two major cities. So far, it has cost me hundreds of dollars - ie, I've lost that much - and two dozen hours of lost time in phone calls, emails, and non-functioning websites and apps (of major airlines and subsidiaries). I currently have several hundred dollars in many cancelled flights apparently being refunded to me.

Almost every flight time gets either changed or the flight gets cancelled, and Airbnbs get cancelled left and right as well. All of this post-confirmation. Secondary effects of these cancellations are having to rearrange schedules of connecting flights or accomodations, and thereby losing money. It's been a (first-world problem) nightmare.

As of now, my first flight looks like it might actually happen, and I've given up on pre-purchasing my second flight, choosing instead to attempt to buy the connecting flight from the airport.

My wife was recently traveling in Europe, and wanted to return early. She asked me to handle calling the airline to reschedule the return flight. It was exactly as you describe.

Luckily I was talking to a very helpful airline employee, and (I guess?) because it was the airline trying to book the tickets (with themselves and other airlines for other legs of the trip), I wasn't charged for each booked-but-ultimately-fictitious flight.

But even the airline employee seemed mystified. What would happen is she'd find and reserve the flights in her system, read me the whole itinerary, then get to the last step and say, "oh that's weird, <other airline> isn't accepting adding you to this flight." This happened three times, with different flights / different partner airlines.

In the end the only thing which worked was to book an identical itinerary, same day of the week and times, just one week early - implying that the only "real" flight out only runs once a week.

>In the end the only thing which worked was to book an identical itinerary, same day of the week and times, just one week early

My own booking problem and later "hack" is as follows: I think one mistake I made was to book my connecting flight (wiht another airline) within a few hours of my arrival time. In this kind of scenario, if airline A or B changes the flight time or cancels, then it messes up my flight with the other airline. Which means, in Covid times, it seems best to stay a day or two in the layover city rather than try to make everything line up before any flights have taken place.

>implying that the only "real" flight out only runs once a week

To try to figure out real flight likelihood, I had to piece together ever-changing gov't regulations about who can fly where, in regards to quarantines, with how the airlines might be responding to that news in their flight scheduling. And on top of that, pretend to book flights to figure out how full they are, then continuing to do this every other day even after my flight is booked, to get a gauge on how likely cancellation is.

This just happened to my family. We booked a non-stop flight on Alaska Airlines from Southern California to Maui only to have it canceled a couple weeks later. They rebooked us from so cal -> Seattle -> Oahu -> Maui, but with young kids this just isn't a realistic option for us. If they wouldn't have offered the flight in the first place we could have looked for a different airline or even a different destination. Now we are doing all that last minute. It is frustrating that they rebooked our flight to save them money at the cost of our time, without reducing our fare at all. It felt very one sided and like a bait-and-switch. We also asked if we could change our dates to a non-stop flight in November or later, but they said we would need to pay the fare difference. Super frustrating, but it seems like airlines just kinda get to do whatever they want.

Are they doing this intentionally to bait-and-switch people?

I do think they are intentionally booking flights that have no to low chances of flying. Currently there is no downside for them – either the flights eventually book enough people to make enough money for the airline to run the flight or they simply cancel them and put you on a much worse itinerary.

Maybe if a flight actually fills up to a certain point (75%?) they'll schedule it. Sort of an on-demand model.

Sure, but they should be upfront with that when booking. Fwiw the plane seemed fairly full when picking seats, especially when taking into account the blocked out the middle seats.

I don't think those seat pickers cannot be trusted for this information. I had one American Airlines flight that showed so full that I had to pay for seats so that my wife and I could sit together. When we got on the plane, it was clearly under capacity and there were plenty of seats together. I complained to the flight attendant a bit just to vent, and later I saw a refund for the up charge. I assume it was due to my complaint, but who knows maybe they have some sort of process that automatically refunds them on under capacity trips.

I used to catch a Delta flight back and forth from sjc to sea, that was consistently about half full.

I would always wait until everyone boarded, then move up to comfort plus or whatever it was called. On my last flight the attendant told me to move back since it wasn't fair for the suckers, no offense, that paid for it.

I offered to pay a nominal amount for the seat. The attendant pulled up the little register stick and said it would be $75. I said no thanks and moved back to my empty row about 3 rows back.

I guess some airlines do it differently.

And free money at a time when they're undoubtedly having cashflow problems.

But it might not be the best overall strategy when they are simultaneously begging for another government bailout.

You are talking about the industry that routinely overbooks flights.

Credit card chargeback is the answer

This resembles me "tactics" of many book selling sites. They keep in their catalog books which they don't have on stock just to get traffic. User arrives and see that a given book is not available. Really annoying.

Well, at least you learn that before paying for the book, not after, and it does not cost you a few hundred €.

Airlines know exactly what they're doing, and the governments are looking the other way. Sad.

> Well, at least you learn that before paying for the book, not after

Not always, and not just with books either. I've had this happen more times than I care for. "X items in stock". Then you order. "The delivery will be in 3 weeks". This has happened to me at book sellers (Amazon!), Bol.com, Hornbach and even at Centralpoint. Drop shippers suffer more from this than companies that really do carry their own stock.

They at least tell you when the delivery will be.

Last year we wanted to buy a new sofa from a local dealer of Black Red White. We chose a model we liked, found it in stock, placed an order, paid for it, and awaited delivery.

Two weeks later - past the expected delivery - no sofa, no indication when it'll arrive. It took my wife one week of e-mailing and phonecalling back and forth between BRW and their local seller until we finally learned that the sofa was not actually in stock, the model is out of production, so it will be custom-manufactured for us and should arrive in few months.

Fortunately, we were able to cancel the order and get our money back. We went to a bed store 10 minutes walk from our home and bought a sofa that we could physically see and touch.

Hornbach actually could not. For stuff like 2x4', which is about as common as it gets.

Advice: Use a good travel agent. In the UK I've used Trailfinders for many years for non-standard long-haul involving changes. They've dug me out of problems when I;ve had them. Like time when my wife didn't pack my passport on a long-haul to Australia. I went back to get my passport, but would miss the first leg. The airlines autmatically cancel all other legs.

The travel agent had sorted it all out while I was on the tube home, I ended up being able to catch up with the family in Singapore a day later after a flight via Düsseldorf. They earned their money that day.

On the other hand (just as anecdotal), I've flown a couple dozen times in my life (~50) and have never had any problems myself (luck plays a big role in this I reckon). Would I have used a travel agency, I'd probably be a few thousand euros lighter.

If you know what you're doing, a travel agency is going to suck. Flying 100+ times a year, I hate when I have to deal with an agency, because it makes being 'agile' in the face of events much, much more difficult.

If you DONT know or rarely travel, it probably IS worth effort. It's can be tricky to deal with things and know what you can/can't do in each situation.

>If you know what you're doing, a travel agency is going to suck

If you think this you probably don't know what you're doing. Working with a good agency is a breeze, but there are lots of shitty ones out there.

Especially for hotel bookings 99% of the time you'd be stupid to not use a travel agent.

You're right, I guess all of the heavy travelers I know are just stumbling around in the dark and don't know what's going on.

I've used a bunch of them for corporate travel, and at no point has it been a breeze. Knowing what fares are available on specific flights, seat assignments, etc. lets me get exactly the experience I want, without 'hoping they got me the seats I like' or anything.

For hotel bookings I don't see what advantage they have over either the basic hotel websites or calling my status hotline for assistance in tricky situations.

In all cases the travel agency removes my agency to work directly with the airlines or the hotel to fix issues.

>You're right, I guess all of the heavy travelers I know are just stumbling around in the dark and don't know what's going on.

If they're corporate travelers spending somebody else's money this is usually the case.

>I've used a bunch of them for corporate travel, and at no point has it been a breeze. Knowing what fares are available on specific flights, seat assignments, etc. lets me get exactly the experience I want, without 'hoping they got me the seats I like' or anything.

It sounds like you've just worked with the big shops that offer a terrible service.

>For hotel bookings I don't see what advantage they have over either the basic hotel websites or calling my status hotline for assistance in tricky situations.

Because of programs like FSPP, STARS and MO fan club you're essentially always going to get better value by booking through a travel agency the hotel has a relationship with.

>In all cases the travel agency removes my agency to work directly with the airlines or the hotel to fix issues.

In all cases the travel agency is in a far stronger negotiating position to fix any issues. If the hotel screws up something I'd much rather have my travel agent yell at them and arrange compensation for me than spend time dealing with it myself, the outcome will always be better this way because his business is worth much more to the hotel than mine.

>> the travel agency is in a far stronger negotiating position to fix any issues.

Maybe, but that assumes that the travel agent is actually working for you. What kickbacks does the agency get from the airline/hotel? That is the longer term relationship, far longer than any one-time customer-agent relationship. The agency would probably rather drop or mistreat a customer than damage their relationship with the airline/hotel.

The agent doesn't get kickbacks from the airline or the hotel. The agent gets a kickback from the distribution system, which itself charges a fee to the airline. Airlines don't want agencies, they tolerate them because they still bring the vast majority of traffic (except for some lowcosts, e.g. SWA, Ryanair)

AFAIK if they're in a partner program like FSPP the kickback will come directly from the chain, and these are exactly the bookings where travel agents can offer the most value.

We'll just have to continue living in different worlds. That's never been my experience, ever.

If they're not a big shop, they're going to have even less leverage with the vendors than I do as the valued customer. If they are a big shop with leverage, they're not going to give a shit about me.

And are you confusing 'better experience' or 'save money'? Sure, I'll definitely grant you that it might be cheaper booking through an agent, especially if you buy a package/etc.

That's not, in my experience, ever a better experience. The goal is to not suffer, not safe a few hundred bucks.

Most of my holidays are in the mid 5 figures range, shorter work trips tend to average around 2k/night. I'm not looking for cheap deals, but for a better experience. I don't buy packages, I mostly design my own itineraries.

I work with a boutique agency with around 10 staff, their yearly volumes with the chains I frequent are in the tens of millions. There are lots of agencies like this, you only need a couple of billionaire clients making regular 500k bookings to have a plenty of leverage.

I always thought travel agents were bullshit until I found out about the perks offered trough the Four Seasons preferred partner program and figured I'd give it a shot for a single booking. After check-in the agent called me to make sure everything went smoothly, I pointed out a tiny issue regarding the check-in progress that I would've immediately forgotten about if not for the fabulous service recovery arranged by the agent. After that this agency has had all of my business.

>> Flying 100+ times a year

Anyone flying that much does so in a very different world. Even without flashing cards or identifying yourself, airline employees and computer systems know you are valued customer, resulting in a very different user experience. This can be as extreme as you rarely ever being bumped off of flights, or as subtle as help lines pushing your cell number to the top of a wait queue. Like it or not, if you fly 100+ times a year you will get special treatment.

Not necessarily, there are lots of things an airline agent won't or can't do for you, however valued your status.

For example, adding ghost segments from another airline so that you can get cross-alliance IATCI without going to the desk at the airport

Again I disagree. "I'm at tghe airport, my flight has been cancelled - can you get me out any other way" - 20 minutes later was sorted/.

Small sample size, but I strongly disagree.

I've managed missed flights, getting bumped, losing my passport and various planning failures, on my own. Everything works out in the end.

The one time I used a travel agent (Flight Centre) for a trip at the beginning of the pandemic, I got screwed.

They delayed me from calling the airline during the period where they were giving out refunds, and kept telling me to just wait.

Then they refused to do anything, and directed me to speak with the airline, but by then it was too late.

Now I don't trust anyone to handle my travels but myself. They don't have your best interests at heart by a long shot.

>They don't have your best interests at heart by a long shot.

Huge shops like flight centre certainly don't, you're nobody to them. Their business primarily consists of selling terrible package holidays to clueless people. This is not what GP meant with "a good travel agent".

The incentives are completely different for smaller agencies offering a personalized service.

why would the incentives be different?

The smaller and "good" agencies generally focus on customer service, while the bigger ones focus on customer acquisition through brand name and probably do not care about customer retention.

It used to be that airlines (and hotels and rental car agencies) paid enough in commissions that travel agencies made good money booking flights.

Southwest Airlines, for example, has never paid commissions.

As sites like Expedia grew, many (all?) other airlines and hotels have reduced and reduced their commissions.

For some people, there's still value in saying "I want to take a trip to x" and let the travel agent work out the details. But the travel agencies now charge a fee to the customer because they get comparatively little from the businesses.

I don't follow this. Customer service is useful for customer retention in small firms, but customer service is also useful for building a brand in large firms.

The motivation for both is the same: selling as many vacation packages as possible.

Brands have inertia. Once your brand is big enough, you can get away with a shitty customer service and generally screwing customers over. If you aren't a total disaster of a company, then the worst that happens is that some of your customers book with another big brand the next year... but then customers who got screwed by that other brand will try their luck with you.

I'm really guessing with major travel agencies it works the same way as it seems to work with mobile operators in my country: you have three major networks to choose from, every one tries to screw you over as much as possible, but since everyone needs a smartphone, people just bounce around between the three in anger (or try to arbitrage deals). Viewed at scale, it's just an equilibrium.

Good customer service is expensive, usually the first one to go when the firm is big enough to have middle managers.

Travel agents can't do much when the airlines are - at best - confused by what's happening. And at worst they're acting in bad faith to continue receiving income for flights which might exist but probably won't - either because of sudden restrictions, or because the flight will be >80% empty and an unviable loss.

So they'll take the money to shore up revenue and cash flow, and then customers can fight their way through their systems to get it back when the flight is cancelled. All manner of hilarity ensues. (Unless you're one of those waiting - now literally numbering millions in Europe - then it's not funny at all.)

Personally I'm not going to trust any airline with a flight booking until there's something resembling a reliable service again.

If you’ve got a high end credit card (something that charges $500 or more a year for the annual fee), it probably comes with a travel concierge service. Your wait time on the phone is going to be much shorter, and the credit card company is a large enough aggregate customer that they will have leverage you don’t.

> Use a good travel agent

A part of me feels like "in the 21st century, why do I need a travel agent". Then again, maybe we all actually do need travel agents again.

And I suspect it's all for the same reason.

In general, you need agents to navigate complex systems with which you have little familiarity.

Given the 21st century air travel features navigating complex automated systems designed to gaslight you into giving them interest-free loans, it seems like an agent is exactly what is called for.

I expect the value of SME-assistance in a number of areas is going to increase, not shrink.

I remember when I was a teenager that I was all into opening everything to digital self-service. I preferred doing business with companies that allowed me to do everything via their website, so that I could do things on my own and without unnecessary human contact. I thought this is how the world is supposed to work.

Fast forward one and a half decade, today I, frankly, have more disposable income than free time. I'm tired of self-service bullshit (and companies always love to complicate things to create upselling opportunities). I avoid doing things through websites or apps. E-mails are better, because once the other side replies, it means a human has acknowledged my request so I get to ensure they understand it right, and if they screw up, they can't blame it on "the system". Phone calls are the best, because dealing with a human on the line is much faster than dealing with confusing websites and broken apps.

And now I finally understand why travel agencies, all-inclusive holidays, concierges, secretaries, etc. all exist. It's for people who are at the stage in their careers where they have enough disposable income to use it to save time and frustration. Relying on digital self-service isn't a sign that you're an awesome self-reliant tech-whizz (like I thought in my teenage years). It's a sign you're not rich enough to pay someone else to deal with it.

A local school had a trip to Sacramento booked through a travel agent. The Travel Agent went bankrupt and the Airline refunded the travel agent and did not refund the ticket to the parents.

So, good being the operative word here as Travel Agents are prone to going bankrupt right now.

I swear by flightfox. I have had extraordinary service with them. Worth every cent. I can't tell you how amazing they have been for me and my family the last months.

https://flightfox.com

I'm not kidding. They got all my international flights refunded and booked flights that I thought were impossible. Paid for itself with each booking that needed expert attention.

Weeks? Months! Six months is not rare at all. But taking your money is instant. They just seem to use this as some weird form of financing.

The refund process is hellish, even at the best of times.

I was caught in a chain of delayed flights on 12th September 2018. Once I made it home my wife persuaded me to file a compensation claim, as we're entitled to do.

Two years later I've still not received a penny. It's not a lot of money, but I'm gonna keep chasing it until they pay up just as a matter of stubbornness now.

(Mostly I'd have been "meh, flights get delayed sometimes". But it was a rough series of flights with a two year old child and that made everything much more difficult for us.)

I wonder if there's some legal reason for this, like if they don't advertise the fictitious flights then they lose the airport slot.

Most airports have temporarily suspended their slot usage rules. At the beginning of the pandemic some airlines flew empty flights on regular routes just to keep their slots but that hasn't happened much for several months now.

They're probably operating on hope. Maybe something happens in 2 weeks like a company announcing they've been making billions of doses of fool-proof vaccine. Or more likely, governments relaxing restrictions because they can't handle the economic pain anymore. Or the flights are actually legally possible, but if only 5 people have booked the route, they don't want to burn all that fuel and pay all the wages and fees to earn the 5 ticket prices, so they'll wait to see if a profitable amount of passengers show up (makes me think of buses in Asia that wait until they're full before setting off...).

Also if you've paid them and they cancel, guess who can use your money to try and survive for a few weeks more. Or even longer since they can give you a voucher.

My personal pet theory is contractual obligations and/or high-value customer placation. There are certain high-frequency business travelers that need(ed) to travel on whatever date and time they pleased, and just cutting one's flight network entirely meant losing them as a customer and potentially paying some fines. However, actually running that many flights is extremely uneconomical. So instead they basically cancel whatever flights don't have one of these particular business travelers on it to try and move demand around.

Of course, those high-value fliers have reduced their use of air travel in the same way everyone else has, so a lot of flights are basically "virtual" and will never actually fly unless they meet some particular threshold of value to the airline. If that's the actual case, then what airlines should be looking into is bringing back standby ticketing.

> if you can't see the flight on the airport's online arrival boards or on flight tracking websites, don't buy the ticket, the flight is likely fictitious.

Afaik the flight gets "confirmed" if enough people buy the tickets. At least that's how I've seen it happen in germany.

The alternative is that they offer the regular schedules, let's say 3 flights per day, let people book, each flight end up being 2/3rd empty. Then they notify the passengers the schedule changed, but in fact they only keep one flight and redirect all passengers to the same plane.

I would be OK with them only advertising one flight or less, I expect that in the current climate there will be reduced flights. I have issues with them deliberately selling tickets on flights that they know will never happen. I think that approach is pretty much a scam.

Just got back from a round trip (intra-eu). My experience was surprisingly pleasant.

Flights are mostly empty (<20% on mine), which makes for good onboard social distancing. It also means there is no point booking in advance. The airline also offered free date changes on all tickets, which also works well considering availability.

The number of flights is certainly down, and I'd suggest avoiding routes that (as the OP mentions) are not actually operating. Have a plan B to avoid getting stranded.

I don't know how this isn't illegal. We were going to book flights for my in-laws to go back to China...some tickets are like $5000. Some were $1000. Upon investigation, the $1000 hasn't flown for weeks, or that airline is not event on the approved list. China has limited who can fly there, and how often.

> if you can't see the flight on the airport's online arrival boards or on flight tracking websites,

Seconded. I learnt this lesson the hard way. Fortunately the interaction with the airline (KLM) was surprisingly pleasant and I was rebooked on an alternate flight from their partner airline (Air France). I monitored that new flight’s schedule like a hawk. Only when I boarded the final leg of the journey was I sure of reaching the destination.

With kids in tow and all the paperwork it’s extremely painful fly now a days. I guess this just about rules out all the tourist travelers for next one year at least. And with business travelers getting used to Zoom I really don’t know how will airlines recover to pre-COVID levels, if at all.

> If you buy a ticket, your flight gets cancelled and you end up spending the next weeks jumping hoops and waiting for your money to be refunded

Whoa, thanks for your comment. I thought I was going crazy. Booked two different flights, one ticket was cancelled after 5 days, one just after 2h. Both without any explanation. I was wondered whether my credit card is blacklisted.

And true, now I'm not hoping to get my money back for weeks, maybe even months.

Do you have a link to where I can find that historical data that you are talking about? Genuinely curious, because I've been facing the same problem you have.

I use fligtaware. For instance this is a flight I am booked on next week. The last flight seems to date from March:

https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/AFR650

Haha weeks — Delta told me two weeks ago they _just_ finished processing refunds for June. Our refund will probably not be refunded for another 6 months, minimum, according to their customer service people.

So they take payment for a service they know they will not provide... Maybe someone can explain how this isn't fraud.

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