9 ms·

Finding a flight is also a frustrating experience for users right now. Airlines are selling tickets for destinations, which if you look at historical data, they

by cm2187 6y ago

Finding a flight is also a frustrating experience for users right now. Airlines are selling tickets for destinations, which if you look at historical data, they haven't flown to for 6 months. If you buy a ticket, your flight gets cancelled and you end up spending the next weeks jumping hoops and waiting for your money to be refunded (and assuming you bought it in a jurisdiction that mandates refunds). Advice: if the airline isn't flying to this destination this week, if you can't see the flight on the airport's online arrival boards or on flight tracking websites, don't buy the ticket, the flight is likely fictitious.

lm28469 6y ago
> if you can't see the flight on the airport's online arrival boards or on flight tracking websites, don't buy the ticket, the flight is likely fictitious. Afaik the flight gets "confirmed" if enough people buy the tickets. At least that's how I've seen it happen in germany. The alternative is that they offer the regular schedules, let's say 3 flights per day, let people book, each flight end up being 2/3rd empty. Then they notify the passengers the schedule changed, but in fact they only keep one flight and redirect all passengers to the same plane.
- cm2187 6y ago
  I would be OK with them only advertising one flight or less, I expect that in the current climate there will be reduced flights. I have issues with them deliberately selling tickets on flights that they know will never happen. I think that approach is pretty much a scam.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
personlurking 6y ago
I've been going through this these past two weeks in Europe. I just need to do two short flights, one of them between two major cities. So far, it has cost me hundreds of dollars - ie, I've lost that much - and two dozen hours of lost time in phone calls, emails, and non-functioning websites and apps (of major airlines and subsidiaries). I currently have several hundred dollars in many cancelled flights apparently being refunded to me. Almost every flight time gets either changed or the flight gets cancelled, and Airbnbs get cancelled left and right as well. All of this post-confirmation. Secondary effects of these cancellations are having to rearrange schedules of connecting flights or accomodations, and thereby losing money. It's been a (first-world problem) nightmare. As of now, my first flight looks like it might actually happen, and I've given up on pre-purchasing my second flight, choosing instead to attempt to buy the connecting flight from the airport.
- phaedrus 6y ago
  My wife was recently traveling in Europe, and wanted to return early. She asked me to handle calling the airline to reschedule the return flight. It was exactly as you describe. Luckily I was talking to a very helpful airline employee, and (I guess?) because it was the airline trying to book the tickets (with themselves and other airlines for other legs of the trip), I wasn't charged for each booked-but-ultimately-fictitious flight. But even the airline employee seemed mystified. What would happen is she'd find and reserve the flights in her system, read me the whole itinerary, then get to the last step and say, "oh that's weird, <other airline> isn't accepting adding you to this flight." This happened three times, with different flights / different partner airlines. In the end the only thing which worked was to book an identical itinerary, same day of the week and times, just one week early - implying that the only "real" flight out only runs once a week.
  - personlurking 6y ago
    >In the end the only thing which worked was to book an identical itinerary, same day of the week and times, just one week early My own booking problem and later "hack" is as follows: I think one mistake I made was to book my connecting flight (wiht another airline) within a few hours of my arrival time. In this kind of scenario, if airline A or B changes the flight time or cancels, then it messes up my flight with the other airline. Which means, in Covid times, it seems best to stay a day or two in the layover city rather than try to make everything line up before any flights have taken place. >implying that the only "real" flight out only runs once a week To try to figure out real flight likelihood, I had to piece together ever-changing gov't regulations about who can fly where, in regards to quarantines, with how the airlines might be responding to that news in their flight scheduling. And on top of that, pretend to book flights to figure out how full they are, then continuing to do this every other day even after my flight is booked, to get a gauge on how likely cancellation is.
piokoch 6y ago
This resembles me "tactics" of many book selling sites. They keep in their catalog books which they don't have on stock just to get traffic. User arrives and see that a given book is not available. Really annoying.
- yakireev 6y ago
  Well, at least you learn that before paying for the book, not after, and it does not cost you a few hundred €. Airlines know exactly what they're doing, and the governments are looking the other way. Sad.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    > Well, at least you learn that before paying for the book, not after Not always, and not just with books either. I've had this happen more times than I care for. "X items in stock". Then you order. "The delivery will be in 3 weeks". This has happened to me at book sellers (Amazon!), Bol.com, Hornbach and even at Centralpoint. Drop shippers suffer more from this than companies that really do carry their own stock.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      They at least tell you when the delivery will be. Last year we wanted to buy a new sofa from a local dealer of Black Red White. We chose a model we liked, found it in stock, placed an order, paid for it, and awaited delivery. Two weeks later - past the expected delivery - no sofa, no indication when it'll arrive. It took my wife one week of e-mailing and phonecalling back and forth between BRW and their local seller until we finally learned that the sofa was not actually in stock, the model is out of production, so it will be custom-manufactured for us and should arrive in few months. Fortunately, we were able to cancel the order and get our money back. We went to a bed store 10 minutes walk from our home and bought a sofa that we could physically see and touch.
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        Hornbach actually could not. For stuff like 2x4', which is about as common as it gets.
tedeh 6y ago
Do you have a link to where I can find that historical data that you are talking about? Genuinely curious, because I've been facing the same problem you have.
- cm2187 6y ago
  I use fligtaware. For instance this is a flight I am booked on next week. The last flight seems to date from March: https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/AFR650 https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/AFR650
dalbasal 6y ago
Just got back from a round trip (intra-eu). My experience was surprisingly pleasant. Flights are mostly empty (<20% on mine), which makes for good onboard social distancing. It also means there is no point booking in advance. The airline also offered free date changes on all tickets, which also works well considering availability. The number of flights is certainly down, and I'd suggest avoiding routes that (as the OP mentions) are not actually operating. Have a plan B to avoid getting stranded.
Angostura 6y ago
Advice: Use a good travel agent. In the UK I've used Trailfinders for many years for non-standard long-haul involving changes. They've dug me out of problems when I;ve had them. Like time when my wife didn't pack my passport on a long-haul to Australia. I went back to get my passport, but would miss the first leg. The airlines autmatically cancel all other legs. The travel agent had sorted it all out while I was on the tube home, I ended up being able to catch up with the family in Singapore a day later after a flight via Düsseldorf. They earned their money that day.
- Bishonen88 6y ago
  On the other hand (just as anecdotal), I've flown a couple dozen times in my life (~50) and have never had any problems myself (luck plays a big role in this I reckon). Would I have used a travel agency, I'd probably be a few thousand euros lighter.
  - count 6y ago
    If you know what you're doing, a travel agency is going to suck. Flying 100+ times a year, I hate when I have to deal with an agency, because it makes being 'agile' in the face of events much, much more difficult. If you DONT know or rarely travel, it probably IS worth effort. It's can be tricky to deal with things and know what you can/can't do in each situation.
    - FDSGSG 6y ago
      >If you know what you're doing, a travel agency is going to suck If you think this you probably don't know what you're doing. Working with a good agency is a breeze, but there are lots of shitty ones out there. Especially for hotel bookings 99% of the time you'd be stupid to not use a travel agent.
      - count 6y ago
        You're right, I guess all of the heavy travelers I know are just stumbling around in the dark and don't know what's going on. I've used a bunch of them for corporate travel, and at no point has it been a breeze. Knowing what fares are available on specific flights, seat assignments, etc. lets me get exactly the experience I want, without 'hoping they got me the seats I like' or anything. For hotel bookings I don't see what advantage they have over either the basic hotel websites or calling my status hotline for assistance in tricky situations. In all cases the travel agency removes my agency to work directly with the airlines or the hotel to fix issues.
rwmj 6y ago
I wonder if there's some legal reason for this, like if they don't advertise the fictitious flights then they lose the airport slot.
- nradov 6y ago
  Most airports have temporarily suspended their slot usage rules. At the beginning of the pandemic some airlines flew empty flights on regular routes just to keep their slots but that hasn't happened much for several months now.
- netsharc 6y ago
  They're probably operating on hope. Maybe something happens in 2 weeks like a company announcing they've been making billions of doses of fool-proof vaccine. Or more likely, governments relaxing restrictions because they can't handle the economic pain anymore. Or the flights are actually legally possible, but if only 5 people have booked the route, they don't want to burn all that fuel and pay all the wages and fees to earn the 5 ticket prices, so they'll wait to see if a profitable amount of passengers show up (makes me think of buses in Asia that wait until they're full before setting off...). Also if you've paid them and they cancel, guess who can use your money to try and survive for a few weeks more. Or even longer since they can give you a voucher.
- kmeisthax 6y ago
  My personal pet theory is contractual obligations and/or high-value customer placation. There are certain high-frequency business travelers that need(ed) to travel on whatever date and time they pleased, and just cutting one's flight network entirely meant losing them as a customer and potentially paying some fines. However, actually running that many flights is extremely uneconomical. So instead they basically cancel whatever flights don't have one of these particular business travelers on it to try and move demand around. Of course, those high-value fliers have reduced their use of air travel in the same way everyone else has, so a lot of flights are basically "virtual" and will never actually fly unless they meet some particular threshold of value to the airline. If that's the actual case, then what airlines should be looking into is bringing back standby ticketing.
thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
This just happened to my family. We booked a non-stop flight on Alaska Airlines from Southern California to Maui only to have it canceled a couple weeks later. They rebooked us from so cal -> Seattle -> Oahu -> Maui, but with young kids this just isn't a realistic option for us. If they wouldn't have offered the flight in the first place we could have looked for a different airline or even a different destination. Now we are doing all that last minute. It is frustrating that they rebooked our flight to save them money at the cost of our time, without reducing our fare at all. It felt very one sided and like a bait-and-switch. We also asked if we could change our dates to a non-stop flight in November or later, but they said we would need to pay the fare difference. Super frustrating, but it seems like airlines just kinda get to do whatever they want.
- ciarannolan 6y ago
  Are they doing this intentionally to bait-and-switch people?
  - thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
    I do think they are intentionally booking flights that have no to low chances of flying. Currently there is no downside for them – either the flights eventually book enough people to make enough money for the airline to run the flight or they simply cancel them and put you on a much worse itinerary.
    - jandrese 6y ago
      Maybe if a flight actually fills up to a certain point (75%?) they'll schedule it. Sort of an on-demand model.
      - thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
        Sure, but they should be upfront with that when booking. Fwiw the plane seemed fairly full when picking seats, especially when taking into account the blocked out the middle seats.
jacquesm 6y ago
Weeks? Months! Six months is not rare at all. But taking your money is instant. They just seem to use this as some weird form of financing.
stevekemp 6y ago
The refund process is hellish, even at the best of times. I was caught in a chain of delayed flights on 12th September 2018. Once I made it home my wife persuaded me to file a compensation claim, as we're entitled to do. Two years later I've still not received a penny. It's not a lot of money, but I'm gonna keep chasing it until they pay up just as a matter of stubbornness now. (Mostly I'd have been "meh, flights get delayed sometimes". But it was a rough series of flights with a two year old child and that made everything much more difficult for us.)
odiroot 6y ago
> If you buy a ticket, your flight gets cancelled and you end up spending the next weeks jumping hoops and waiting for your money to be refunded Whoa, thanks for your comment. I thought I was going crazy. Booked two different flights, one ticket was cancelled after 5 days, one just after 2h. Both without any explanation. I was wondered whether my credit card is blacklisted. And true, now I'm not hoping to get my money back for weeks, maybe even months.
fma 6y ago
I don't know how this isn't illegal. We were going to book flights for my in-laws to go back to China...some tickets are like $5000. Some were $1000. Upon investigation, the $1000 hasn't flown for weeks, or that airline is not event on the approved list. China has limited who can fly there, and how often.
vishnugupta 6y ago
> if you can't see the flight on the airport's online arrival boards or on flight tracking websites, Seconded. I learnt this lesson the hard way. Fortunately the interaction with the airline (KLM) was surprisingly pleasant and I was rebooked on an alternate flight from their partner airline (Air France). I monitored that new flight’s schedule like a hawk. Only when I boarded the final leg of the journey was I sure of reaching the destination. With kids in tow and all the paperwork it’s extremely painful fly now a days. I guess this just about rules out all the tourist travelers for next one year at least. And with business travelers getting used to Zoom I really don’t know how will airlines recover to pre-COVID levels, if at all.
schainks 6y ago
Haha weeks — Delta told me two weeks ago they _just_ finished processing refunds for June. Our refund will probably not be refunded for another 6 months, minimum, according to their customer service people.
yummypaint 6y ago
So they take payment for a service they know they will not provide... Maybe someone can explain how this isn't fraud.

by cm2187 6y ago

lm28469 6y ago

> if you can't see the flight on the airport's online arrival boards or on flight tracking websites, don't buy the ticket, the flight is likely fictitious. Afaik the flight gets "confirmed" if enough people buy the tickets. At least that's how I've seen it happen in germany. The alternative is that they offer the regular schedules, let's say 3 flights per day, let people book, each flight end up being 2/3rd empty. Then they notify the passengers the schedule changed, but in fact they only keep one flight and redirect all passengers to the same plane.

cm2187 6y ago
I would be OK with them only advertising one flight or less, I expect that in the current climate there will be reduced flights. I have issues with them deliberately selling tickets on flights that they know will never happen. I think that approach is pretty much a scam.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

personlurking 6y ago

I've been going through this these past two weeks in Europe. I just need to do two short flights, one of them between two major cities. So far, it has cost me hundreds of dollars - ie, I've lost that much - and two dozen hours of lost time in phone calls, emails, and non-functioning websites and apps (of major airlines and subsidiaries). I currently have several hundred dollars in many cancelled flights apparently being refunded to me. Almost every flight time gets either changed or the flight gets cancelled, and Airbnbs get cancelled left and right as well. All of this post-confirmation. Secondary effects of these cancellations are having to rearrange schedules of connecting flights or accomodations, and thereby losing money. It's been a (first-world problem) nightmare. As of now, my first flight looks like it might actually happen, and I've given up on pre-purchasing my second flight, choosing instead to attempt to buy the connecting flight from the airport.

phaedrus 6y ago
My wife was recently traveling in Europe, and wanted to return early. She asked me to handle calling the airline to reschedule the return flight. It was exactly as you describe. Luckily I was talking to a very helpful airline employee, and (I guess?) because it was the airline trying to book the tickets (with themselves and other airlines for other legs of the trip), I wasn't charged for each booked-but-ultimately-fictitious flight. But even the airline employee seemed mystified. What would happen is she'd find and reserve the flights in her system, read me the whole itinerary, then get to the last step and say, "oh that's weird, <other airline> isn't accepting adding you to this flight." This happened three times, with different flights / different partner airlines. In the end the only thing which worked was to book an identical itinerary, same day of the week and times, just one week early - implying that the only "real" flight out only runs once a week.
- personlurking 6y ago
  >In the end the only thing which worked was to book an identical itinerary, same day of the week and times, just one week early My own booking problem and later "hack" is as follows: I think one mistake I made was to book my connecting flight (wiht another airline) within a few hours of my arrival time. In this kind of scenario, if airline A or B changes the flight time or cancels, then it messes up my flight with the other airline. Which means, in Covid times, it seems best to stay a day or two in the layover city rather than try to make everything line up before any flights have taken place. >implying that the only "real" flight out only runs once a week To try to figure out real flight likelihood, I had to piece together ever-changing gov't regulations about who can fly where, in regards to quarantines, with how the airlines might be responding to that news in their flight scheduling. And on top of that, pretend to book flights to figure out how full they are, then continuing to do this every other day even after my flight is booked, to get a gauge on how likely cancellation is.

piokoch 6y ago

This resembles me "tactics" of many book selling sites. They keep in their catalog books which they don't have on stock just to get traffic. User arrives and see that a given book is not available. Really annoying.

yakireev 6y ago
Well, at least you learn that before paying for the book, not after, and it does not cost you a few hundred €. Airlines know exactly what they're doing, and the governments are looking the other way. Sad.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  > Well, at least you learn that before paying for the book, not after Not always, and not just with books either. I've had this happen more times than I care for. "X items in stock". Then you order. "The delivery will be in 3 weeks". This has happened to me at book sellers (Amazon!), Bol.com, Hornbach and even at Centralpoint. Drop shippers suffer more from this than companies that really do carry their own stock.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    They at least tell you when the delivery will be. Last year we wanted to buy a new sofa from a local dealer of Black Red White. We chose a model we liked, found it in stock, placed an order, paid for it, and awaited delivery. Two weeks later - past the expected delivery - no sofa, no indication when it'll arrive. It took my wife one week of e-mailing and phonecalling back and forth between BRW and their local seller until we finally learned that the sofa was not actually in stock, the model is out of production, so it will be custom-manufactured for us and should arrive in few months. Fortunately, we were able to cancel the order and get our money back. We went to a bed store 10 minutes walk from our home and bought a sofa that we could physically see and touch.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      Hornbach actually could not. For stuff like 2x4', which is about as common as it gets.

tedeh 6y ago

Do you have a link to where I can find that historical data that you are talking about? Genuinely curious, because I've been facing the same problem you have.

cm2187 6y ago
I use fligtaware. For instance this is a flight I am booked on next week. The last flight seems to date from March: https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/AFR650 https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/AFR650

dalbasal 6y ago

Just got back from a round trip (intra-eu). My experience was surprisingly pleasant. Flights are mostly empty (<20% on mine), which makes for good onboard social distancing. It also means there is no point booking in advance. The airline also offered free date changes on all tickets, which also works well considering availability. The number of flights is certainly down, and I'd suggest avoiding routes that (as the OP mentions) are not actually operating. Have a plan B to avoid getting stranded.

Angostura 6y ago

Advice: Use a good travel agent. In the UK I've used Trailfinders for many years for non-standard long-haul involving changes. They've dug me out of problems when I;ve had them. Like time when my wife didn't pack my passport on a long-haul to Australia. I went back to get my passport, but would miss the first leg. The airlines autmatically cancel all other legs. The travel agent had sorted it all out while I was on the tube home, I ended up being able to catch up with the family in Singapore a day later after a flight via Düsseldorf. They earned their money that day.

Bishonen88 6y ago
On the other hand (just as anecdotal), I've flown a couple dozen times in my life (~50) and have never had any problems myself (luck plays a big role in this I reckon). Would I have used a travel agency, I'd probably be a few thousand euros lighter.
- count 6y ago
  If you know what you're doing, a travel agency is going to suck. Flying 100+ times a year, I hate when I have to deal with an agency, because it makes being 'agile' in the face of events much, much more difficult. If you DONT know or rarely travel, it probably IS worth effort. It's can be tricky to deal with things and know what you can/can't do in each situation.
  - FDSGSG 6y ago
    >If you know what you're doing, a travel agency is going to suck If you think this you probably don't know what you're doing. Working with a good agency is a breeze, but there are lots of shitty ones out there. Especially for hotel bookings 99% of the time you'd be stupid to not use a travel agent.
    - count 6y ago
      You're right, I guess all of the heavy travelers I know are just stumbling around in the dark and don't know what's going on. I've used a bunch of them for corporate travel, and at no point has it been a breeze. Knowing what fares are available on specific flights, seat assignments, etc. lets me get exactly the experience I want, without 'hoping they got me the seats I like' or anything. For hotel bookings I don't see what advantage they have over either the basic hotel websites or calling my status hotline for assistance in tricky situations. In all cases the travel agency removes my agency to work directly with the airlines or the hotel to fix issues.

rwmj 6y ago

I wonder if there's some legal reason for this, like if they don't advertise the fictitious flights then they lose the airport slot.

nradov 6y ago
Most airports have temporarily suspended their slot usage rules. At the beginning of the pandemic some airlines flew empty flights on regular routes just to keep their slots but that hasn't happened much for several months now.
netsharc 6y ago
They're probably operating on hope. Maybe something happens in 2 weeks like a company announcing they've been making billions of doses of fool-proof vaccine. Or more likely, governments relaxing restrictions because they can't handle the economic pain anymore. Or the flights are actually legally possible, but if only 5 people have booked the route, they don't want to burn all that fuel and pay all the wages and fees to earn the 5 ticket prices, so they'll wait to see if a profitable amount of passengers show up (makes me think of buses in Asia that wait until they're full before setting off...). Also if you've paid them and they cancel, guess who can use your money to try and survive for a few weeks more. Or even longer since they can give you a voucher.
kmeisthax 6y ago
My personal pet theory is contractual obligations and/or high-value customer placation. There are certain high-frequency business travelers that need(ed) to travel on whatever date and time they pleased, and just cutting one's flight network entirely meant losing them as a customer and potentially paying some fines. However, actually running that many flights is extremely uneconomical. So instead they basically cancel whatever flights don't have one of these particular business travelers on it to try and move demand around. Of course, those high-value fliers have reduced their use of air travel in the same way everyone else has, so a lot of flights are basically "virtual" and will never actually fly unless they meet some particular threshold of value to the airline. If that's the actual case, then what airlines should be looking into is bringing back standby ticketing.

thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago

This just happened to my family. We booked a non-stop flight on Alaska Airlines from Southern California to Maui only to have it canceled a couple weeks later. They rebooked us from so cal -> Seattle -> Oahu -> Maui, but with young kids this just isn't a realistic option for us. If they wouldn't have offered the flight in the first place we could have looked for a different airline or even a different destination. Now we are doing all that last minute. It is frustrating that they rebooked our flight to save them money at the cost of our time, without reducing our fare at all. It felt very one sided and like a bait-and-switch. We also asked if we could change our dates to a non-stop flight in November or later, but they said we would need to pay the fare difference. Super frustrating, but it seems like airlines just kinda get to do whatever they want.

ciarannolan 6y ago
Are they doing this intentionally to bait-and-switch people?
- thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
  I do think they are intentionally booking flights that have no to low chances of flying. Currently there is no downside for them – either the flights eventually book enough people to make enough money for the airline to run the flight or they simply cancel them and put you on a much worse itinerary.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    Maybe if a flight actually fills up to a certain point (75%?) they'll schedule it. Sort of an on-demand model.
    - thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
      Sure, but they should be upfront with that when booking. Fwiw the plane seemed fairly full when picking seats, especially when taking into account the blocked out the middle seats.

jacquesm 6y ago

Weeks? Months! Six months is not rare at all. But taking your money is instant. They just seem to use this as some weird form of financing.

stevekemp 6y ago

The refund process is hellish, even at the best of times. I was caught in a chain of delayed flights on 12th September 2018. Once I made it home my wife persuaded me to file a compensation claim, as we're entitled to do. Two years later I've still not received a penny. It's not a lot of money, but I'm gonna keep chasing it until they pay up just as a matter of stubbornness now. (Mostly I'd have been "meh, flights get delayed sometimes". But it was a rough series of flights with a two year old child and that made everything much more difficult for us.)

odiroot 6y ago

> If you buy a ticket, your flight gets cancelled and you end up spending the next weeks jumping hoops and waiting for your money to be refunded Whoa, thanks for your comment. I thought I was going crazy. Booked two different flights, one ticket was cancelled after 5 days, one just after 2h. Both without any explanation. I was wondered whether my credit card is blacklisted. And true, now I'm not hoping to get my money back for weeks, maybe even months.

fma 6y ago

I don't know how this isn't illegal. We were going to book flights for my in-laws to go back to China...some tickets are like $5000. Some were $1000. Upon investigation, the $1000 hasn't flown for weeks, or that airline is not event on the approved list. China has limited who can fly there, and how often.

vishnugupta 6y ago

> if you can't see the flight on the airport's online arrival boards or on flight tracking websites, Seconded. I learnt this lesson the hard way. Fortunately the interaction with the airline (KLM) was surprisingly pleasant and I was rebooked on an alternate flight from their partner airline (Air France). I monitored that new flight’s schedule like a hawk. Only when I boarded the final leg of the journey was I sure of reaching the destination. With kids in tow and all the paperwork it’s extremely painful fly now a days. I guess this just about rules out all the tourist travelers for next one year at least. And with business travelers getting used to Zoom I really don’t know how will airlines recover to pre-COVID levels, if at all.

schainks 6y ago

Haha weeks — Delta told me two weeks ago they _just_ finished processing refunds for June. Our refund will probably not be refunded for another 6 months, minimum, according to their customer service people.

yummypaint 6y ago

So they take payment for a service they know they will not provide... Maybe someone can explain how this isn't fraud.