Imagine getting to the airport with your family at 5am, in good time for your 6.30 flight to Cape Town, and after a long wait in the check-in queue, you’re told that there’s no room for you on the plane.
And not just you – three other families as well, all Durban teenagers and their parents on their way to the One Direction concert.
Among them at the King Shaka airport last Wednesday morning were Paul and Heidi Wiggins and their 14-year-old daughter, Nina. They and another family had booked and paid for their tickets on Kulula’s website last May and been allocated seats on a British Airways flight.
“So Comair had had our money for almost nine months and we got to the airport in good time, but we were simply told we couldn’t get on the plane,” said Heidi Wiggins. “The ground crew were totally unapologetic and unsympathetic.”
Overbooking is a global airline practice; intended to avoid empty seats. Or, as Comair puts it, “in order to supplement the generally low profit margins achieved in a tough and competitive industry”.
When they get their predictions wrong, as in this case, ticket carrying passengers get “bumped off”, which to airline employees is fairly routine, but for affected passengers, it comes as a nasty shock.
In the end, those Durban families flew in two directions to get to Cape Town. Comair got them on to a BA flight to Joburg, departing at 6.30am, telling them that from there they could fly to Cape Town, but when they arrived at Joburg’s OR Tambo International Airport (ORTIA), they discovered the Comair staff there hadn’t been notified of their arrival.
“I couldn’t believe the Durban staff had done that,” Wiggins said.
“The least they could have done was make things easier for us by informing their colleagues in Joburg so that they could make a plan for us.”
They finally made it to Cape Town on a 9.30am BA flight, and Comair compensated them with vouchers for one-way Durban to Joburg flights, which don’t cover airport taxes. One had missed a tour of a wine farm; another a doctor’s appointment made months earlier.
The Consumer Protection Act has a lot to say about such a scenario. (See sidebar.)
I asked Comair why that flight was overbooked, given that it was the day of the One Direction concert, and as there was no concert in Durban, thousands of KZN fans would be flying to Cape Town.
“On investigation it appears that we had a system error which resulted in a higher than usual overbooking percentage,” said kulula.com and British Airways’ head of marketing Shaun Pozyn.
“We sincerely apologise to the customers who were affected and inconvenienced, and are currently working on how we can rectify this in the future to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
“Customers who were affected by the overbooking of flight BA6300 were re-routed as well as provided with compensation.”
On the claims that the Comair ground staff on the day in question were unapologetic, rude and failed to liaise with their counterparts at ORTIA about the “bumped off” passengers, Pozyn said: “We pride ourselves on providing a great, memorable travel experience for our customers and therefore we are investigating the manner in which the airport handled the situation and how we could improve, as well as ensuring that there is better communication between the various airports.”
“To our knowledge”, he said, no Comair passengers missed the One Direction concert as a result of being bumped off a flight.
“We look at each case individually but will most certainly look at compensation as well as paying for any additional costs that the customer may incur,” Pozyn said.
Good to know.
Overbooking: CPA rules
IF A company accepts a reservation to supply you with goods or services on a specific date and time, and then fails to do so because of lack of capacity or stock – and they can’t provide something in its place of better quality or class – they must refund whatever you paid them, with interest.
AND they must compensate you for costs directly incidental their breach of contract.
But the company doesn’t have to do either if they offer you “comparable goods or services” and you accept the offer, or if they make you such a reasonable offer and you refuse it.
And if the company’s failure to honour your booking was due to circumstances beyond their control, and they took “reasonable” steps to inform you of the problems as soon as it was practical to do so, they must refund you, but they don’t have to compensate your for your direct costs as well.
“Circumstances beyond the company’s control” does not apply if the shortage of airline seats or accommodation, for example, arose out of the company’s failure to “adequately and diligently” carry out their business.
Contact Wendy Knowler on e-mail: consumer@knowler.co.za or Twitter: @wendyknowler or get more tips and warnings: www.timeslive.co.za/lifestyle/inyourcorner/
Got a ticket? Sorry, you have been bumped off
And not just you – three other families as well, all Durban teenagers and their parents on their way to the One Direction concert.
Among them at the King Shaka airport last Wednesday morning were Paul and Heidi Wiggins and their 14-year-old daughter, Nina. They and another family had booked and paid for their tickets on Kulula’s website last May and been allocated seats on a British Airways flight.
“So Comair had had our money for almost nine months and we got to the airport in good time, but we were simply told we couldn’t get on the plane,” said Heidi Wiggins. “The ground crew were totally unapologetic and unsympathetic.”
Overbooking is a global airline practice; intended to avoid empty seats. Or, as Comair puts it, “in order to supplement the generally low profit margins achieved in a tough and competitive industry”.
When they get their predictions wrong, as in this case, ticket carrying passengers get “bumped off”, which to airline employees is fairly routine, but for affected passengers, it comes as a nasty shock.
In the end, those Durban families flew in two directions to get to Cape Town. Comair got them on to a BA flight to Joburg, departing at 6.30am, telling them that from there they could fly to Cape Town, but when they arrived at Joburg’s OR Tambo International Airport (ORTIA), they discovered the Comair staff there hadn’t been notified of their arrival.
“I couldn’t believe the Durban staff had done that,” Wiggins said.
“The least they could have done was make things easier for us by informing their colleagues in Joburg so that they could make a plan for us.”
They finally made it to Cape Town on a 9.30am BA flight, and Comair compensated them with vouchers for one-way Durban to Joburg flights, which don’t cover airport taxes. One had missed a tour of a wine farm; another a doctor’s appointment made months earlier.
The Consumer Protection Act has a lot to say about such a scenario. (See sidebar.)
I asked Comair why that flight was overbooked, given that it was the day of the One Direction concert, and as there was no concert in Durban, thousands of KZN fans would be flying to Cape Town.
“On investigation it appears that we had a system error which resulted in a higher than usual overbooking percentage,” said kulula.com and British Airways’ head of marketing Shaun Pozyn.
“We sincerely apologise to the customers who were affected and inconvenienced, and are currently working on how we can rectify this in the future to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
“Customers who were affected by the overbooking of flight BA6300 were re-routed as well as provided with compensation.”
On the claims that the Comair ground staff on the day in question were unapologetic, rude and failed to liaise with their counterparts at ORTIA about the “bumped off” passengers, Pozyn said: “We pride ourselves on providing a great, memorable travel experience for our customers and therefore we are investigating the manner in which the airport handled the situation and how we could improve, as well as ensuring that there is better communication between the various airports.”
“To our knowledge”, he said, no Comair passengers missed the One Direction concert as a result of being bumped off a flight.
“We look at each case individually but will most certainly look at compensation as well as paying for any additional costs that the customer may incur,” Pozyn said.
Good to know.
Overbooking: CPA rules
IF A company accepts a reservation to supply you with goods or services on a specific date and time, and then fails to do so because of lack of capacity or stock – and they can’t provide something in its place of better quality or class – they must refund whatever you paid them, with interest.
AND they must compensate you for costs directly incidental their breach of contract.
But the company doesn’t have to do either if they offer you “comparable goods or services” and you accept the offer, or if they make you such a reasonable offer and you refuse it.
And if the company’s failure to honour your booking was due to circumstances beyond their control, and they took “reasonable” steps to inform you of the problems as soon as it was practical to do so, they must refund you, but they don’t have to compensate your for your direct costs as well.
“Circumstances beyond the company’s control” does not apply if the shortage of airline seats or accommodation, for example, arose out of the company’s failure to “adequately and diligently” carry out their business.
Contact Wendy Knowler on e-mail: consumer@knowler.co.za or Twitter: @wendyknowler or get more tips and warnings: www.timeslive.co.za/lifestyle/inyourcorner/
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