Online flight bookings 24 hr cooling of

Online flight bookings: Travel trade not happy with a call for online flights to have a 24 hour cooling of period, after a passenger watchdog renewed a call for airlines to improve the process of booking tickets online.

“A 24-hour rule would cut out haggling between airline and complainant about where the fault lies and allow customers to book air tickets over the internet with greater confidence.”

The Air Transport Users Council wants more carriers to introduce a 24-hour ‘cooling off’ period to allow passengers to change bookings or get a refund if necessary.

The issue was first raised because the council was becoming “increasingly disappointed” by the way some airlines handled complaints when passengers had problems booking tickets on the internet.

Some airlines have responded by bringing in 24-hour rules but others need to follow suit, according to the AUC.

In a new report today the AUC said: “We want more airlines to introduce a 24-hour cooling off period.

“And for those airlines that have already committed to a cooling off period for telephone reservations, we want them to update this commitment to include online reservations.

“In addition, we want them to be generally more sympathetic to those passengers who inadvertently make an error during the booking process.”

The AUC said it would continue to campaign on for better practice by airlines on the issue.

However the travel trade reonded with:

I absolutely disagree with the idea that clients should get a “cooling-off period”.
Cake and eat it springs to mind. Iata agents do not get a cooling off period.

Agent error ADM’s are common place and miss-epelling a name can mean high charges that the agent has to pay.

This will give passengers more time to hunt around for a cheaper fare whilst having secured and taken off sale a seat.

I urge the airlines to resist unless they would like to afford all booking agents the same level playing field.