This week we learned about a sad case, a tragedy really, involving a woman who was denied boarding enroute to her mother’s deathbed due to a ticketing snafu. It’s a reminder to always book directly with the airline, when possible.
A woman in Colorado named Carrol Amrich was trying to get to Minnesota to see her mother before she died. Her landlord booked her a ticket through Traveler Help Desk, an online travel agency. Travel was on United.
When her mother’s health deteriorated further, the landlord called United directly to move the flight up. The change was made without issue. Amrich checked in and boarded her flight.
But the gate agent received a reservation cancellation notice after the passenger had boarded. Amrich was forced to exit the aircraft and there was not sufficient time to resolve the problem prior to takeoff. Amrich connected the gate agent to her landlord on the phone, who offered to pay whatever was necessary to get her on the flight. But it was too late…the flight was gone.
With no further flights available, she began driving. Her mother passed away before Amrich reached her.
Traveler Help Desk confirms it cancelled the ticket, stating that it suspected fraud and cancelled only after trying to reach Amrich multiple times. Amrich and her landlord state they never received a call or email from Traveler Help Desk. For its part, United could have let the woman remain onboard…but they would have been giving her a free flight.
Why You Should Book Directly with the Airline
The most important reason you want to book directly with the airline, whenever possible, is for ease of change. If you have booked through sites like Orbitz or Expedia before, you know how difficult it can be dealing with an overseas call center trying to adjust a ticket. There are additional fees as well for any changes or cancellations.
The fact is, there is a great deal of fraud in the world of airline tickets. Some online travel agencies, like Traveler Help Desk, put restrictions in place to protect against it. Perhaps these are overzealous protections, but they are not wholly without logic. When you transact directly with the airline, you avoid these concerns that led to Amrich missing the chance to say goodbye to her mother.
Additionally, booking directly with the airline gives you more leverage during irregular operations such as delays or cancellations. Even dealing with schedule changes may be greatly impacted by whether you bought your ticket direct or through a third party.
CONCLUSION
There are some cases in which interline tickets require the use of an online travel agency like Orbitz or Expedia. But in most cases, your best course of action is too book directly with the airline.
This very tragic case illustrates why.
This is heartbreaking.
“she began to driving”
Is there any reason at all to book a domestic ticket with an OTA? Assuming no crazy routing or strange airline combinations (those are rare anyway.)
The price happens to be much lower when booking domestic flights in Europe. Some OTAs offer 30+ % discounts which may be significant.
Jimmy can you provide some examples? I live in Europe and rarely see OTA’s able to undercut the airline.
Cheap flights is a really good resource for intl biz class.
Sad! In the case of a booking made by an OTA, does the agent legally retain certain rights relating to rebookings and cancellations?
This is good advice. I had to cancel a few tickets booked by a family member through Orbitz a couple of years ago and it was an absolute nightmare. Purchasing and making changes directly through the airline can be enough of a hassle. Adding another layer of poorly trained and difficult to understand call center personnel to the equation just makes it hellish.
The only exception I make to this rule is booking through Chase Ultimate Rewards (Sapphire Reserve) to get the 1.5cpp valuation or on through AMEX Travel (AMEX business Platinum) to get the 35% of redeemed points back. When booking through these portals, I always make it a point to login to either my American account or United account to check that the flight is showing up there and change my seat (if necessary).
that’s why i rarely bother with any sort of travel agency whatsoever.
instead of actually offering what the customer asked for, they spend their whole days talking the ears off the clients regarding how amazing all their add-on and trip protection crap are … just so they can meet their monthly quota targets.
I can’t figure out why her landlord would be making her travel plans. Not really relevant to story but found it odd.
Apparently she didn’t have the ready money and her landlord was just trying to help her out.
Only odd because of the way the story was presented here.
I booked my AF F ticket via Travelocity, because the AF website wouldn’t sell me the connections I wanted. Later, I went through AF directly to make a change since they changed my schedule (didn’t occur to me that I needed to go through Travelocity). Travelocity treated it as an airline-imposed schedule change, and just wanted me to confirm that it was acceptable. Of course, if I were unscrupulous, I could have told them “no” and tried to get them to change me to the 77W for free…:)
Of course, regular people don’t know this (or read your blog).
I have always booked direct. The only exception is those bank points (FP/M+/etc.) that require using a portal. Always makes me nervous, even as a frequent flyer. You also lose CC coverage.
Actually, it depends on the country and the way the agents operate.
For example, here in Russia the tickets bought through Russian ticket agents are almost always 50-70% cheaper than the tickets bought directly through the airline, and I’ve yet to experience any problems with these agents.
Changing the tickets usually comes with fees, as it should, and can normally be done online quite quickly. It should also be said that some of the more obscure airlines are impossible to deal with directly, but are quite easy to deal with via agents (in muly experience, Mahan Air), while some of the well-known airlines are atrocious at handling any requests and emails in general (in my experience, Aeroflot and Turkish Airlines)
Please take down the photo of Ms. Amrich’s mom and respect the family’s privacy during this difficult time.
This is simply a stock photo.
The woman is probably low income with limited functionality. The OTA pulled the trigger early on an innocuous change. The landlord booked on an OTA for some reason and made the change thru the same OTA rather than the airline directly. United, which is an awful airline overall, actually made the right call this time and is blameless in my opinion.
For all of you contemplating OTA credit cards including the new 10x capital card, beware.
There’s a bit of a dichotomy. Bad travel agents are terrible–they’re difficult to deal with, they charge extra fees, and they often screw up tickets. Pretty much all of the OTAs are in this category. Having said that, a good travel agent can be indispensable. I consider myself to be the latter, and I’ll readily admit that good travel agents are few and far between (especially for airfare–most agents now focus solely on tours and cruises where the real money is). Having said that, depending on the route and fare, I can offer my customers significant discounts off of published fares (e.g. 20% off of AA transcon business class), completely free upgrades, change penalty waivers, etc.. Plus, if they want to, my customers can call me directly to work things out if they encounter irrops, which for non-status passengers can save a ton of time.
So, while I concur that often it is best to book direct, I feel that “always” is a bit strong.