COLUMN: How to avoid one way of being bumped off a flight

Being barred from a flight despite having a valid, paid-for booking, a ticket in hand, and having arrived at the airport in good time is a global phenomenon, thanks to airlines’ policy of overbooking in an attempt to get maximum bums on seats.

Naturally, “bumped off” passengers are not happy, but the Consumer Protection Act does compel airlines to compensate them in a specific way.

Mango airlines has been barring passengers from flying despite their booked seats being available, causing all kinds of drama at boarding gates and check-in counters.

In the case of tickets purchased with a credit card, Mango insists that the credit card be produced, or at least a photo or copy of it.

When the ticket was paid for by a third party, and neither they nor the traveller was aware of this policy, and thus didn’t make an image of the card available in time, the consequences have been devastating.

It happened to me two weeks ago.

I was due to speak at a conference in Midrand, my ticket having been paid for by the conference organisers, with a credit card, a copy of which I hadn’t been sent.

I’d checked in online, and was told to stand aside when I tried to board.

I got hold of the organisers, who sent me a photo of the card used, but the Mango crew member insisted it was the wrong card. It was only thanks to the intervention of Mango’s communication manager Hein Kaiser that I was able to board the flight at the last minute.

Last week Alan Cooper and two fellow journalists, who’d flown from Durban to Johannesburg for a press conference, were all barred from boarding their Mango flight home that evening, due to lack of card proof. “The crew manning the boarding gate did say we could buy new tickets, at R2500 each, right there,” Cooper says.

Their host couldn’t get the card proof to the boarding gate in time and they weren’t able to get on to a later flight, so all three were forced to overnight at an airport hotel and get a 6am flight home, at a cost of R2200 each, the following day, causing enormous personal disruption.

And I’ve since heard several other anecdotal stories of both leisure and business travellers being refused entry to Mango flights because of the airline’s credit card policy.

Can Mango do this, legally? Well, yes, if they adequately disclose the credit card policy upfront.

I had another look at the confirmation e-mail I was sent by Mango when I checked in online. Towards the bottom, the disclosure appears: “At check-in, the guest must present both the credit card used to make the booking, and some form of identification.”

Given that Mango is currently the only airline implementing this policy, the disclosure should be more impossible-to-miss, and included on online boarding passes – in huge letters, in my view.

I asked Kaiser when Mango began to strictly enforce its credit card policy, and why, given that other airlines aren’t doing the same.

“The procedure is in place to protect cardholders due to the enormous amount of credit card fraud around,” he said.

“We do communicate this in our terms and conditions as well as on all booking confirmation emails and in media releases over the years.”

But the airline is clearly re-thinking its stance. “We are presently investigating different options to this process in order to minimise inconvenience to our guests while simultaneously protecting cardholders,” Kaiser said.

Good move. Routinely alienating and grossly inconveniencing legitimate would-be passengers is not in anyone’s interests.

Credit card fraud is clearly a huge risk to all online businesses.

So how do other airlines protect themselves without demanding sight of the cards used to pay for tickets?

Shaun Pozyn, kulula.com’s head of marketing, says its automated systems “check and re-check” credit card validity to identify potential fraud attempts speedily and prevent the transaction from being successful.

“If a suspicious card transaction is detected, but is able to pass all the automatic “fail” conditions, the transaction is flagged for immediate human investigation,” he said. “We are constantly investigating ways to further reduce card fraud and minimise any impact on our legitimate customers.”