Take heed of this advice from the Consumer Council the next time you go booking for airline tickets.
Many a consumer complaint has arisen because of disputes with travel agents over the itinerary of the booking, that does not live up to the expectation of travellers.
In the first 10 months of this year, the Council has received 121 complaints arising out of purchase of airline tickets. This compared with 229 in 2001, 207 in 2002, and 186 in 2003.
With Christmas and New Year fast approaching, this timely simple advice will go a long way to help secure the airline booking of your choice.
Consumers are urged to seek from the travel agent an Air-Ticket Itinerary which is a computer printout linked with an airline reservation system, as written confirmation of the booking.
The Itinerary printout should provide updated information for the reservation status of the flight seat under purchase. Basically there are four main groups of information furnished in the Itinerary which consumers should pay heed:
First, the details of the air-ticket reservation system (the more commonly used system is, namely, Abacus, Amadeus, Galileo or Worldspan), the customer and the travel agent (e.g. name, address, the agent license number or reference code, the booking reference for the reservation system).
Second, the date, time, and airport terminal of flight departure and arrival, the stopovers, the equipment (the aircraft type e.g. Boeing 747), the flight number, direct or indirect flight, the type of passenger seat class (economy, business or first), the reservation status (confirmed or wait-listed or requested), special request arrangement for seat, and meal (as vegetarian).
Third, the airline company (the code of the airline), the passenger reservation number under quote for airline records, such terms and conditions as airport or immigration tax charged, prior re-confirmation of flight before departure as well as other special reminders to ticket holder.
Fourth, the passenger name records (PNR), passenger reservation number (this is the reference reservation number designated by the airline on the transaction which the passenger can apply to communicate with the airline directly on all future enquiries related to his flight, enabling the passenger to confirm the accuracy of the flight information as provided by the travel agent).
It is of crucial importance that unless all the above information is checked to be in order and that each of the journeys is marked with CONFIRMED or O.K. in the seat status, consumers should refrain from making any payment of the fare.
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