On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 19:40:52 +0100, "Mary Fisher"
wrote:


"Andy Hall" wrote in message
.. .

As far as reservations are concerned, most have been progressively
screwing the travel agents over the last few years and driving
passengers towards buying restricted electronic tickets on line. This
is going in the opposite direction and not always that helpful to
travellers.

Which do you do, Andy?

Mary

A combination of the two.

If I am doing a simple out and back trip to somewhere that is well
served with flights like Paris, Amsterdam or Frankfurt then I usually
pick an airline and book it on the airline's web site. The major
groupings are reasonable for that (e.g. OneWorld, Star Alliance etc),
especially when there is code share. Frequently I don't know when I
will return, so may book a fixed outbound flight and a flexible
return. It's reasonably easy to change a booking or even check in
on line and to use E-tickets in this scenario.

However, often I am doing trips involving a sequence of 2-4 places in
a week and where it is either too restricting or even impossible to
make the complete trip with one airline or even with one alliance. It
may also be that a direct routing isn't possible or economic. In
these instances there is a high likelihood that I will need to alter a
flight timing or even a routing along the way.
In these instances, an E-ticket, even if possible, would be a
nightmare. This is because of a mix of currencies and the non
joined-up nature of the airline reservation systems between companies,
and the effect is that if an alteration is needed part way through,
the airline handling it has to convert the ticket to paper, calculate
the value, do the currency conversion and usually issue a new ticket.
In complicated cases, this can take 30 minutes or more and is hopeless
if one is tight on time.
So for these, I use a business travel agent who is first of all able
to get me good combinations and options of sectors and fares and
secondly can help with changes mid trip. They would be more
expensive than on line booking for a simple trip, but for the
complicated ones, being able to call them 24x7 if needed and get
issues fixed and changes made without hanging around is well worth it.





--

..andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl