July 2017 Summer Travel News
07/19/2017
Seat allocation
Ryanair bans passenger who abused check in attendant
Free Airline Tickets scam exposed on Facebook
July 2017 Summer travel news
Seat allocation
We all know that official airline policy is that if you don’t pay for a seat with your airline ticket, then you are ‘randomly allocated’ a seat anywhere on the plane.Now, it appears that a European Low-cost carrier has launched a new seating allocation policy. It seems that those who have not booked seats are being placed in the middle seat.
The change came to light after some incidents were reported:
Firstly: A party of twenty golfers found that all but three of them had been allocated in ‘B’ and ‘E’ seats scattered all over the plane. The only exception was three of their number who had pre-booked seats with better legroom.
Secondly: Two grandparents traveling with a five-year-old child also found that they were allocated middle seats all over the plane. (The carrier has since changed the policy on children traveling with adults).
Seasoned fliers may point out that people who pre-book seats normally do so as they wish to look out of the window or they need an aisle seat. Middle seats are not the favored ones. Hence many more of them are empty when random allocation takes place.
Ryanair bans passenger who abused check in attendant
Ryanair is in the news with a principled stand on respect for staff.The summer season is a busy time for all airlines and very stressful for staff. Drunk passengers are usually the biggest problem on air flights to holiday destinations, but other problems can occur:
A passenger on a Brussels-Berlin flight has been banned for life after abusing a female check-in attendant and reducing her to tears. The row began after he turned up without printing off his boarding pass.Ryanair’s rules state that boarding passes must be printed off in advance, by the passenger. If you turn up at the airport without one, there is a €50 fee to print the pass.
The passenger took issue with this, but his ban means now he has paid an even higher price. Ryanair is entirely right; there is no call to abuse staff who are only doing their job.
Family wins year long airline ticket compensation row
A UK family of three have just won a long flight for damages. Business Class airline tickets were booked by a mother and two sons for a once in a lifetime skiing trip to Canada.There were two legs Manchester-Heathrow, then Heathrow Calgary,however, they missed the second leg due to fog.No replacement flight could be found next day, so they returned home. So they claimed refunds.The Canadian hotel and car hire company paid up, but the airline refund was over $800 short.
The airline said that since they had flown them to Heathrow from Manchester and back no refund was allowed for that leg.However, under European Union rules if someone ends up in a pointless place i.e. Heathrow Airport, and cannot journey on then BOTH legs must be refunded.The outstanding amount on the airline tickets has now been refunded in full.It is of vital importance that passengers know their rights in cases like this.
Free Airline Tickets scam exposed on Facebook
There are numerous scams on Facebook offering lots of free stuff. Usually, you have to like and share the post; sometimes you are required to comment on it to be eligible to get the goodies.Taking part in a survey or online quizzes are other ways that data can be harvested. In this way, posts can attract huge followings which the original scammer can sell on to other scammers.
The latest scam involves free tickets on American carrier Delta. But Delta is not the only one affected.Within the past fortnight Singapore, Philippines, Singapore and Air Asia have all had to issue press releases saying that Facebook posts regarding free tickets from them are fake.
Facebook advises that only posts with a Facebook blue badge should be regarded as genuine. Whats App users have also been warned about scammers. These hoax offers compromise your privacy and security and exposes your friends to risks too. Remember, if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is !.