What happens when a traveler buys an air ticket and then sees an advertisement for the same ticket on the same airline at a much lower price?
Whether the traveler can get that lower price depends on a number of things-which airline is involved, how quickly a call is made after the new fare is announced, presumably in an ad, and what the small type in the ad says.
One law is immutable, however: The traveler, or the travel agent, must make the effort to switch the ticket or get a refund; no airline makes such rebates on its own.
A case in point involves a trip from New York to Sarasota in February. The traveler called Trans World Airlines on Jan. 16 and reserved two tickets for Feb. 14.
He charged them to a credit card because he was told he had to pay within 24 hours to get the round-trip fare of $320.
On Feb. 6, he saw a big TWA ad offering a round trip to Sarasota at $158. The ad even listed the 11:30 a.m. flight he was booked on. He called TWA to get a refund and was told there were no more seats on that flight at the $158 price.
The traveler said there were two seats, which he was holding, complete with boarding passes, but that he hoped to exchange at a lower price. The reservations agent was adamant.
TWA`s reply
When the traveler wrote to TWA he received a reply from a customer-relations manager. She apologized for a misunderstanding and acknowledged that the original tickets fitted certain requirements for the cheaper tickets: travel to Florida between Sunday and Wednesday, with return between Tuesday and Friday, and that the traveler qualified for seven days` advance purchase. However, she said, the outbound date, Wednesday, Feb. 14, was a blackout date for the low fare and thus no refund was possible. The small type on the ad does indeed lists a blackout date for New York to Sarasota from Feb. 14 to 16.
Don Morrison, a spokesman for TWA, said the blackout dates protected higher Florida-bound fares for the Presidents` Day holiday weekend, Feb. 17, 18 and 19-returns were blacked out Feb. 18, 19 and 20. But there is more to the story than that.
First, Morrison said, TWA handles discounted fares differently, depending whether the price represents a spontaneous TWA selling effort or was created to match another airline`s.
In the Sarasota case, he said, TWA was competing with an offer by Eastern Airlines.
”When we match someone else`s fare,” he said, ”we restrict the number of tickets we offer at that fare. When it`s our own fare, a reduction of a fare we`ve been offering, we usually let our passengers change if the ticket fits the requirements.”
The advance purchase requirement probably would apply, Morrison said, but if the competition was waiving this, TWA would too.
So, absent blackout dates, the question is likely to be how quickly a ticketholder can jump to lock up any of the few seats available.
Morrison said the fare probably was available in the reservations computer the night before the ad was printed, and perhaps earlier the day before.
A travel agent who has sold a block of seats or who has a favored client might notice the new fare and move swiftly, before the ad or any other announcement.
But Morrison said his airline changed 750,000 fares a month-one pair of cities will involve first-class, full coach fare, discount, military and government rates, child fares and others-and monitoring such an array would be impossible.
The view from other airlines
All the airline officials pointed out that new domestic fares were not advertised until the fare was officially filed, and that sometimes there was a delay in getting the ad pulled together, so a highly limited number of seats might be gone before the traveler read the ad.
When asked if the number of seats per flight might be as few as 10, most airline people said this was too low, but even a cursory study of yield management in airline fares demonstrates that a lower fare is opened up when the flight is not selling but stays shut when it sells out.
United has a liberal policy. According to Sarah Dornacker, a spokeswoman, if the traveler is holding a ticket and United advertises a fare for that trip that is more than $25 cheaper, round trip or one way, the customer is entitled to a refund, even if the ad appears on the day of the flight.
The requirement for a seven-day advance purchase would not apply, Dornacker said. For a family, the total saving must be at least $40 to qualify for a refund. If this refund must be negotiated at the airport, the traveler should take the ad along and get there with adequate time to do the job.
Pan American considers that the customer is entitled to a refund if the booking class for the new cheaper fare is the same as that on the ticket the customer holds.
In such a case, Elizabeth Manners, a spokeswoman, said, a refund may be obtained even after the flight, through an application to the refunds office with the necessary documents.
If the booking class is not the same, but no change of date or flight number would be required, and there are seats available in the new fare category, then the ticket may be exchanged.
Northwest Airlines, according to Bob Gibbons, a spokesman, has a
”guaranteed air fare rule,” under which a customer may receive a refund if the old ticket matches the new ticket specifications on advance purchase, length of stay and fare class.
On advance purchase, this would mean that if the cheap fare required buying seven days ahead, there would have to seven days remaining before the flight.
American Airlines requires that all the conditions for the new fare be met, including advance purchase, and that the new fare be in the same booking category, before the ticket can be exchanged, according to a spokeswoman.
She said that if the fare was in another category the line would try to accommodate the passenger but might not be able to.
Continental also allows the customer to ”downgrade” to a cheaper fare if all the requirements for the new fare are met, including the advance purchase restrictions, according to Ned Walker, a spokesman. But seats must be available in the new fare category, which returns the question to moving fast. Delta says a refund is available if all the conditions of the new fare, including the advance-purchase requirement, are met and the new fare is in the same category.
Neil Monroe, a spokesman, said Delta did little fare advertising, so a traveler may be dependent on a travel agent to learn that a lesser fare is available.
USAir also will provide a refund if the fare is in the same booking class and the request met all the requirements of the new fare, including advance purchase, and a seat is available in the new fare, Susan J. Young, a spokeswoman, said.
When the question of the TWA customer and his trip to Sarasota came up in February, I was doing some other research with Joseph Vengersammy, a travel agent at Galo Travel in New York.
He said he was coping with the same situation on Continental; he had five members of a family flying to Florida on tickets that he had already printed when the new fare was advertised.
When he went into his computer, he found seats available at the lower fare, retrieved the tickets, credited the account and issued the cheaper tickets.
”Even when availability does not show,” Vengersammy said, ”the airline is often willing to do a `flight firm` for a productive travel agent.
”They call up people who have reservations but not tickets at the cheap fare and find out how many of them are actually going to take the plane. This sweep may produce enough space for the agent`s clients.”
There is one other way in which a travel agent may be able to help:
airlines have been known to wink at advance-purchase tickets that were produced less than the required amount of time ahead.
Whether you like using a travel agent or not, the agent can cope well in a volatile market. If the cheapest ticket matters to you, this is the time to get help. –
