South African Airways would like to advise you that on Friday evening, our code share partner, United Airlines confirmed to us a change in their free baggage allowance policy as it applies to Economy Class passengers traveling between the United States and South Africa and involving any of their flights.  Effective immediately, for any tickets purchased after July 14, 2011, passengers checking in with United Airlines for a connecting flight (code share or interline) to South African Airways, will be charged $70 USD for their second piece of luggage.  This applies only to passengers in Economy Class, traveling to or from South Africa, Malawi or Zambia.  All other Southern African destinations remain unchanged with the free allowance of two pieces.

Our  free checked baggage allowance with our code share partner at JetBlue remain unchanged.  The free baggage allowance on JetBlue code share flights remains two pieces of luggage.

• Client books from here to Accra (lets not name and shame) – booked with an airline that leaves Sunday night. His passport – 3 visas in 2 weeks including an Angolan visa which on its own should take 2 weeks is delivered on Saturday morning as the passport only came out the embassy just before 5 on Friday. When opening passport it seems one of the visas have disappeared from the passport. Action stations – delay the flight by a day and fight for a same day visa Monday. Now as the meetings are important and your airline does not fly on the day that is needed to assist this client – why should the client be out of pocket for your lack of service delivery and imposed rules saying the fares are non refundable. The refundable ticket is almost double the price. So in this instance are we saying that the client must buy the more expensive ticket in case something like this happens? I must tell you straight off that by doing this you are making the complete trip not feasible anymore – and you will loose a seat. I completely understand the fact that they are cheaper tickets and there are rules etc however the client did not have the option to fly the next day and you did not have a service – added to the fact he has an extremely valid excuse not to fly there certainly should be some leniency in the situation!
• Book and pay – ever tried to book flights to Pakistan @ the last minute. Try it getting seats borders on a lottery system. Scenario – Client needs to fly Sunday – problems with servers etc and guys need to go on site. Agency searches for 3 days for seats – finally picks up 2 seats and books. Quotes client and within 2 hrs bookings are cancelled. Have you ever tried to book – quote – get PO signed off by 3 people – payment sent – payment verified and issued within 2 hrs? Surely this is stretching the ticketing time limits a tad far – I could understand 8 hrs however 2 hrs – not feasible and if you were not the only airline with the monopoly on that route I would consider shifting business. As travel agents we have enough stress with the job without having the airlines work against you. It does however make you have to work stronger harder faster.
• Change fees and availability – in a similiar vain BA has a great system – straight forward change fees and upgrade when and if you need. This is easy and takes out the complete complexity of the system as a whole. Ever heard the term – Keep It Simple Stupid – well this certainly applies to everyone – I am not saying we need price collusion we need terms collusion – set the change rates on your tickets the same – make it EASIER for agents to want to use your airline – stop fighting against the agencies and complexing their every day lives – it is completely unnecessary and in turn you are complexing (Ok there is no such a word however there should be) your own lives as now when that client flies abroad.

To coin a phrase from a *wise* man – Simplicity – efficiency – repetition

• Johannesburg to Miami one way via Atlanta on Delta – the client need to do a reroute ie fly to Houston – reroute was permitted however as there was no availability to book JNB-ATL-Houston , there was however availability if I booked Atlanta Houston – so what I needed was for the married segments to be broken so I could use JHB to Atlanta and the new portion to Houston – ie collect the reissue fee and keep the passenger on Delta – well nope the could not assist – only option – cancel ticket and sell on a carrier that could assist for that date and routing.
• Kulula Lumpur return in Business class – client needed to fly a day earlier and the only option was to reroute via Singapore – keep the validating carrier as Air Malaysia and reissue the ticket with the change fee. This is a R40 000 ticket. Response from Air Malaysia – No – no reroute prior to departure! No problem hand ticket in for a refund and sell the ticket on Singapore airways. So now you get R1000 cancellation fee instead of a R40 000 booking.

These are just two recent examples I have encountered which leads me to raise the question is your own inflexibility costing you money?

“In light of the resumption of its service between Hong Kong & Bangkok, CX announced that the special flight it is operating on Friday to & from Utapao Airport, south of Bangkok, will instead operate to & from Bangkok. Arrangements will be made for pax already booked on this special flight to return to Hong Kong on one of the airline’s flights from Bangkok.“

Dozens of airlines this week rerouted flights, cancelled flights or delayed them. Most airlines also offered free changes and no refund charges for clients who were delayed or were not going to travel.

Well done to the airlines this week great job guys!