What You Need To Know About Air Ticket: Q & A Airlines are constantly cancelling tickets, changing, combining, rerouting, and rescheduling flights. And some travelers often want to change their own plans, flights, and schedule, even after buying tickets. Bankrupt airlines (Nigeria Airways), low-fare airlines, and airlines that are struggling to avoid bankruptcy are especially likely to make drastic changes to their routes and schedules, in an attempt to find a recipe for profitability. Following is some information about what might be possible in such situations, how to arrange it, and what it might cost. You should consider these issues carefully before you buy any airline tickets. These answers to FAQ’s describe common policies and travel industry practices, but each ticket has its own set of rules. Similar tickets sold by different airlines may have very different rules, and airlines often have incomplete information and provide inaccurate advice about the rules of tickets purchased from travel agents. If you have any questions, do not rely on this Web page: consult the travel agency from which you bought your tickets (or the airline, if you bought your tickets directly from the airline), for the exact rules of your specific tickets. What happens if I no longer want to go to certain destinations, or to fly on certain airlines, after I have bought my airline tickets? Don’t count on being permitted to change your route, destinations, or airlines without penalty, regardless of what happens — even in the event of illness or injury, natural disaster, war, or terrorist incident. Neither airlines nor travel agencies are required to offer refunds or waive refund or change penalties or fees in such cases, and many insurance policies exclude coverage for costs that result from war, terrorism, or government orders. Once tickets are issued, changes of route (sequence of cities and connection points), destinations, and/or airlines can generally be made only at substantial cost. In order to change your route, destinations, or airlines after buying your tickets, you may have to buy new tickets and/or forfeit the amount you have paid for non refundable tickets that you choose not to use. With “load factors” (the percentage of seats filled with paying passengers) increasing, and more flights entirely full, there may not be any space available on an alternate flight. What can I do if I want to change my plans? Some airlines have made special rules for changes to tickets in the event of war, a “security alert” by the government, illness or injury, etc.. Airlines are not required to do this, or to make any exceptions to their normal cancellation, refund, and change rules. These special rules do not apply to all airlines, situations, all tickets, or all routes. Check with the airline for any special rules that may apply to your tickets, or any exceptions to normal rules that the airline may have made. Many tickets permit date changes, as long as you stick to the originally ticketed airlines and routing and there is a flight with space available on your desired new dates. (In general, consolidator tickets purchased form a travel agency are more likely to permit date changes than are tickets purchased directly from the airline or at a published fare.) If you are no longer interested in visiting a particular destination, the most economical option is often simply to revise your dates to minimize your stay there. Depending on the flight frequency and schedules, you might be able simply to change planes and continue on, without having to leave the airport, but if flights are less frequent or fully booked you might have to spend one or more nights in transit. Check with your travel agent (or the airline, if you bought your tickets directly from the airline) for schedule options and the date change rules, fees (if any), and procedures for your specific tickets. What if an airline changes its routes or discontinues flights because of war, terrorism, bankruptcy, strike, weather, or other events? An airline is required either to fly you between the destinations specified on your ticket, or to give you a full refund. If the airline is still operating, and still serves the cities specified on your tickets (even on a different route, or by way of different connection points), the airline will usually arrange to transport you on alternate route. This may also require a change of dates, depending on how often alternate flights operate and how many seats are available on them. A recent example in Nigeria was the strike actions by staff of Aero Contractors. Some passengers were re-routed on other airlines. If an airline discontinues all service on any route to a specific destination, and you have tickets to that destination, the airline will often “endorse” your ticket to another airline, and arrange for that airline to transport you for all or part of the journey. Arrangements to have tickets endorsed to an alternate airline, in the event of cancellation of service to a destination on your route, generally must be made directly with the airline on which you have tickets. In some cases an airline may offer to reroute your tickets to an alternate destination, especially if they have discontinued service to your ticketed destination. You are not obligated to accept such an offer, but it is preferable to accept alternate transportation than to seek a refund and buy new tickets. Obviously, an airline is extremely unlikely to discontinue service to their own hub airport, if they are still operating at all, or to offer refunds, rerouting, or endorsement of tickets to other airlines on account of events in their home country. For a refund, you need to request a refund through the travel agency or airline from which you purchased your tickets, and wait for the refund request to be processed. This process usually takes several months, so you won’t have the refund money immediately to use to buy new tickets. Note that the face value of your tickets is typically the official “published fare”. If you bought a discounted ticket, the amount you paid, and thus your refund, may be substantially less than the official fare printed on your tickets. Note also that airlines can take up to a year to process refunds. If the original tickets were on the cheapest airline and route, new tickets will probably cost more. For all these reasons, you are generally better off trying to get the airline to fly you on an alternate route, or to an alternate destination, or to “endorse” your ticket to another airline that still serves your desired destination, rather than submitting your tickets for refund and buying new tickets. What if I miss a connection? You might have to pay a change fee or an additional fare, or buy a new ticket to continue your journey, regardless of the reason you missed the connecting flight. (Yes, even if it was the airline’s fault!) See this page to learn How To Book Cheap Air Ticket Yourself Can I get a refund for my tickets if I no longer want to use them? You might be eligible for a refund of the airfare. You might not. Most airline tickets are now completely nonrefundable (except for the taxes, as discussed below). Check with the place from which you purchased your tickets. As long as your ticketed flights are still operating as originally scheduled, neither airlines nor travel agencies are required to waive their normal processing fees or refund penalties if you change your plans because of fear of war, terrorism, or anything else. Most airlines’ terms and conditions require the airline to provide a full and unconditional refund — even if the ticket was otherwise completely nonrefundable — if you refuse to accept a change in the scheduled flight time — no matter how slight — after you have bought your ticket. This applies only if the schedule is changed. If the schedule remains the same, but the flight actually departs or arrives late (or early), your nonrefundable ticket remains nonrefundable. But if you present yourself to check in, and are told, “By the way, your flight is now scheduled to depart 3 minutes later than the time on your ticket”, you are entitled to say, “That’s not acceptable to me. I demand all the money I paid for this ticket back, without any airline penalty.” (If you purchased the ticket through a travel agency, you may still have to pay any penalty or refund fee charged by the travel agency, which could be substantial.) If you want to change, rather than cancel, your tickets, getting a refund is useful only if there is still time, and still seats available, to buy new tickets for less than what it would cost to change the old ones. But in many cases, particularly with completely nonchangeable tickets (which are increasingly common), refusing to accept a schedule change may be your only way to avoid a 100% penalty. If you want to do this, make sure you don’t do anything that could be construed as “acceptance” of the schedule change, such as responding, “OK”. Let them know immediately that the change is “unacceptable”. You may need to point them to the specific language in their tariff, but that should be easy, since they are required to have their tariff available for inspection at every place where tickets are sold. (If the tariff is available only in electronic form, they are also required to assist you in retrieving and searching it.) You might be eligible for a refund (again, even if your ticket is otherwise nonrefundable) if you refuse to permit yourself or your luggage to be searched, if you refuse to “produce positive identification” on demand, or if the the airline refuses to transport you. But some airlines have begun to change their rules to prohibit refunds of nonrefundable tickets in such cases. So check the airline’s rules before you ask for a refund, or before you buy a ticket, if you aren’t sure the airline will be willing to transport you. If you don’t actually fly, regardless of the reason and regardless of whether the fare is refundable, you should be entitled to a full refund of all the taxes included in the price of your airline ticket. Government’s in different countries have interpreted this differently. in Canada, for example, the government has required airlines to refund taxes on unused tickets, while in the USA the Department of Transportation has accepted airlines’ arguments that transportation tax is payable on the “sale” of the ticket, even if no transportation is provided. And more and more airlines fail to provide a breakdown of the taxes and surcharges included in ticket prices, so it can be hard to tell how much of what you have paid is tax, and how much is “fuel” or other “surcharges” that actually are part of the fare, and are always kept by the airline. It’s even harder to tell which of the taxes are payable on the sale and which are payable only if you actually travel, whether the airline has passed the taxes on to the government, and if so, to which government(s). The only way to find out is to submit your tickets for a refund of the taxes whenever you aren’t able to use them — even if the fare is nonrefundable. If you don’t like this situation, complain to the relevant government agencies. For Nigeria, check here If you decide to submit your tickets for refund, these points are VERY IMPORTANT: (1) cancel your reservations before your scheduled travel date, (2) save your original physical tickets or e-ticket receipts and documentation of cancellation of your reservations, and (3) contact the airline or travel agency from which you bought your tickets for refund instructions. Who should I contact if I need or want to make changes, or if the airline has cancelled or changed the flights I was supposed to be on? Often it is easiest to contact the airline on which you are ticketed to fly. As long as they are still operating, they will usually take care of necessary changes for you, even if that requires “endorsing” your ticket to another airline. Well, we understand that the customer service culture of some domestic airlines in Nigeria are appalling, but the ticketed transporting airline is not necessarily the airline contractually obligated to do these things. So don’t be surprised, and don’t assume they are lying (although they might be!) if they say you have to deal with some other airline. Each ticket, even for flights on multiple airlines, is issued by a single airline identified, somewhat confusingly, in the “issued by” box (even when the ticket is actually issued by a travel agency and not the airline itself). That “issuing” or “validating” airline may not be the one form whom you thought you were buying the ticket, may not actually be operating any of your flights, and may not even have its codeshare on any of them. But it initially gets all your money and is responsible for parceling it out to the transporting airline(s) as well as for fulfilling your contract of carriage. If the ticketed transporting airline won;t or can;t accommodate you, it’s usually the validating airline you have to deal with to make any necessary changes. If you have a set of tickets for several flights, perhaps on different airline, they may have been issued as one ticket or as several tickets, validated on the same or different airlines. The problem is that most ticket sales Web sites, including those both of airlines and of travel agencies, fail to tell you which flights will be ticketed separately or which airline (not necessarily any of the operating airlines or those whose flight numbers appear on the flights) will issue your tickets. In the USA, Department of Transportation regulations at 14 CFR 399.83 require the airline to give you an actual ticket, which would show all of this information and more, but that rule is routinely violated and has never been enforced. Always demand a ticket when you pay, not just an itinerary or confirmation showing that you have some sort of ticket(s) for certain flights. If you have an e-ticket, what you want is a complete copy, or at minimum the “passenger receipt teller”. If the airline won’t give you one, make a formal complaint and enforcement request to the Department of Transportation. If your ticket says something like “REFUND ONLY THROUGH ISSUING AGENT” or “REF ISS AGT ONLY” in the “ENDORSEMENTS” box, you may have to request a refund through the agent form whom you purchased it, rather than through an airline office. In some cases, changes to tickets may require you to refund one or more tickets, and buy a new ticket or tickets. However, airlines often lie to passengers about their relationships with travel agencies and agents, and about the refund value of tickets. Never buy new tickets, in the expectation of being able to get a refund for your original tickets, without checking first with the agency from which you purchased your original tickets. No matter what an airline office may try to tell you, any change to tickets not requiring a refund can be made directly by the issuing airline Airplane bathroom etiquette No doubt many of us have experienced the situation of being caught short during a flight, especially on a long-haul journey. Even worse is the rushed visit that is required when a bout of airsickness overtakes. In either case, this call for a visit to one of the aircrafts small bathrooms, which are hardly big enough to swing a mouse in, let alone a cat. As we rush along the aisle, hoping the queue will not be too long, I wonder how many of us give thought to the bathroom etiquette that we should observe as we relieve ourselves at thirty thousand feet. Let us take an example of a typical call of nature whilst travelling amongst the clouds. The doors on aircraft bathrooms are small and sometimes difficult to close behind you, due to the lack of space to move around. However, it is important before you commence use of the facilities, to ensure that the door is securely locked. It is quite off-putting for someone opening the door to find the cubicle already in use. Furthermore, it may not be that comfortable for the occupant if this happens, as he or she is likely to find it difficult to extricated themselves from an embarrassing position. I mean, have you ever tried to shut the door of an aircraft bathroom whilst exercising the bodily functions you went in there for? The next step in the etiquette routine comes upon completion of the bathroom use. It relates to flushing. Flushing is a natural habit after home bathroom use, so one would think that this would continue in flight. However, this is not always the case, as some flight attendants will witness. Although it is accepted that often the flush button is difficult to find, and even when found somewhat puzzling to use, it is a simple matter of courtesy to take those extra few seconds to perform this task rather than leaving the next occupant an unwelcome present. Having completed the flushing task you will then want to cleanse your hands of course. There is a sink provided for this purpose and, in addition, containers of soap or hand wash. Etiquette rules suggest that, if the cleansing containers are empty you should ask the flight attendants for a refill. This is not only for your benefit, but also a polite request for those who follow. After all, you would not want the next occupant to pop his or her head round the bathroom door and yell down the aisle at you “what did you use for soap?” The final step on the bathroom etiquette process is twofold. Firstly, you should ensure that all paper products used have been deposited in either the pan or the waste container provided. Walking back to your seat trailing a paper train can be a blushing experience. Secondly, in view of the cramped confines of the bathroom, it is always wise to take those extra few seconds to ensure that your clothes are in order. To leave the bathroom with the back of your dress caught in the top of your knickers or the tail of your shirt sticking out from the zip is not considered good manners. And there we have it, the complete guide to aircraft bathroom etiquette. It only takes a few minutes longer, but it saves a lot of embarrassment to both you and other passengers. For the sake of decorum, any reference to the “mile-high” club has been deliberately left out of this article. After all there is little that can be said here apart from the fact that you should at least be on first name terms with the other person and endeavour not to disrupt the listening pleasure of those trying to watch the in-flight movie as a result of your activities. Amazing things you can get for free at airports Airports have some pretty amazing amenities nowadays, like golf courses and full-service spas. But for cash-strapped travelers, some of the very best airport perks are the ones you can get for the price of showing up. The secret to bagging many of these freebies is being in-the-know. Here’s a rundown of not-so-obvious airport extras, which are offered to travelers at no charge. Water-Bottle Refill Ever since I discovered that water fountains are one of the germiest places in airports, I’ve been inclined to avoid them. The alternative, then, to a water-fountain refill, is usually an absurdly expensive bottle of Fiji. But at San Francisco International Airport, flyers have access to “hydration stations” at each terminal upon exiting security. The difference between these stations and your run-of-the-mill fountain is that the former turn on via automatic hands-free sensors and feature high spigots that facilitate an easy refill. Although not many other airports, as far as I know, have refill stations, it appears to be a growing trend. Chicago O’Hare has them. And last year, the stations were installed at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, too. A Tour A tour of Zurich International Airport made our list of 10 Surprisingly Cool Airport Attractions; this behind-the-scenes excursion, while indeed cool, isn’t free. But a bunch of other airports do offer complimentary tours for travelers passing through. There are freeTerminals to Tarmac Tours at San Diego International Airport and free tours of Singaporethat operate out of Changi Airport, and travelers stopping in Salt Lake City International Airport can hop onboard a courtesy van for no-cost tours of Temple Square. Additionally, Turkish Airlines offers free Istanbul tours for flyers stopping in Istanbul Ataturk Airport, but you must be traveling on that airline to be eligible. Free Skype Calls The world’s first Skype video booth was installed in Tallinn Airport a few years ago. Travelers can use the station to make free Skype-to-Skype video calls in a private booth with a video screen and a headset. (One can also use the booth to call regular phone numbers, but that feature isn’t free.) So far, we haven’t heard news of the Skype booths having been installed at any other airports. But reportedly, AdTech, the company that developed the initial prototype, plans to set up more booths in other airports in the future. Until then, travelers can use their own smartphones, computers, and tablets to make free Skype-to-Skype calls at airports — or anywhere in the world. Religious Services Whether seeking ceremony or just a quiet space to sit, flyers will find free facilities for doing just that at numerous airports. Various religious and spiritual services, from almost-dailyCatholic masses at Boston Logan to a quiet, sun-lit meditation room at Albuquerque International Sunport, are available in terminals around the world. Feeling wicked? One can even attend confession at Chicago Midway, where sins are heard 10 minutes before scheduled masses and by appointment. These services are almost always free, but donations are usually welcome. A Pet Potty Break More and more airports are offering animal-relief facilities for those traveling with four-footed friends; this is often a fenced-in patch of outdoor space reserved especially for pets. Some are nicer than others. At Miami International Airport, look for the handful of dog parks surrounded by white picket fences and featuring both grass and dirt surfaces as well as waste-disposal stations. (Note that you’ll have to go through security after visiting Miami’s pet-relief area.) Other airports just have a patch of grass surrounded by chain-link fencing; still, that’s better than nothing. For a more complete list of airport pet-relief areas, see this helpful roundup on Dog Jaunt. Luggage Tags Luggage tags might not be the most exciting freebee on this list. But, as many experienced travelers know, they’re available for free at almost all airport ticket counters. And they’re very useful — especially if you’ve forgotten to affix your own luggage tags. You should fill out and attach a bag tag to each checked piece of luggage — and carry-ons too — so that airline staff can identify your bags in case they get lost. You’ll either find the free luggage tags sitting on the check-in counter, or you’ll need to ask for them. A Little Help When You Need It Disabled travelers will find special assistance at airports around the world. But they’re not the only ones who need a little help sometimes. Many airports have programs that offer assistance to virtually anyone who needs it, such as young travelers, flyers who don’t speak English, or even lost or confused passengers — for free. For example, at New York’s JFK Airport, a nonprofit program called Traveler’s Aid exists to provide support to kids traveling alone, people who have lost their tickets, or those who have gotten separated from travel companions. Similar setups are available at many airports, from the Meet and Assistprogram for travelers who don’t speak the local language at Zurich Airport to Customer Care Counters, which can provide information in up to 170 languages, at Vancouver International Airport. Fragile Stickers Safeguard breakables with a free “fragile” sticker affixed to your bag. Some travelers buy these in advance. But they’re offered at most airline check-in counters free of cost. Just ask your airline customer-service agent to slap a few on your suitcases. Although we can’t promise that the baggage handler tossing luggage onto the plane is going to read and also heed that sticker, it’s worth a try. A Charge When your terminal is crowded with hundreds of harried passengers, every outlet is in use, and your phone is running out of juice, try this trick: Ask airline staff to help. This isn’t a guaranteed fix. Airline staff are not obligated to help you recharge batteries if they don’t feel like it. But I’ve talked to travelers who have had luck politely asking a gate agent to charge a phone or a laptop behind the desk or podium (there are often outlets back there). Explain to the agent that all outlets are occupied and that you’re desperate for a charge. Throw in a “please” and a gracious smile for good measure. Some Exercise It all started in Northern California. The Yoga Room at San Francisco International Airport was, according to many reports, the world’s first airport yoga room. Since that amenity opened less than two years ago, it’s become more or less commonplace to see travelers folding into downward dog or working up a sweat via jogging trails in airports. There are free yoga rooms at Dallas/Ft. Worth and Burlington international airports. Baltimore/Washington has a two-kilometer “Cardio Trail” that flyers can access free of charge. Similarly, there are designated exercise paths within Minneapolis-St. Paul and Indianapolis international airports.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 04:21:14 +0000
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