travelislife
Established Member
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2011
- Posts
- 2,404
Had an interesting experience booking a last minute ticket on the weekend. At about 11am on Saturday a family member decided they needed to go to Bangkok, ideally on TG466 departing at 15:25 that day. Anyway first port of call was Thai's website, where even though it was showing the flight the payment screen would just keep failing with an error. So tried Thai Airways Australian reservation number, no good, closed on the weekends. Called Thai Airways Bangkok, who told me there were only 2 seats left for sale but they couldn't issue a ticket for an Australian based reservation. Ok, next up was give STA and Flight Centre a call, neither of them could see the seats available or sell the ticket.
So by this time it was about 12:30 and decided bugger it and went out to the airport without a ticket. Check in was well under way with fairly long queues, we headed over to the service desk and asked to buy a ticket and the lady's face there dropped and looked quite worried as we said we needed on that flight. Anyway the part I then found interesting was that they can't actually sell any tickets there. They gave us two phone numbers for two travel agents, so gave the first one a call and it was all booked on the phone with 5 minutes for a reasonable price too. That wasn't the end of it though as the person travelling realised they had forgotten their passport, so it was a mad dash back to the city to pick it up where they then jumped in a cab and headed back out, just getting checked in in time for the flight. So not the most relaxing Saturday!
I suppose from the whole thing the annoying bit is there wasn't anywhere we could find a phone number to book the last minute ticket before heading out to the airport. You would think the airline themselves would want the opportunity to sell these seats. Many people would probably give up and not bother heading to the airport to try. Now we have this agent's contact details we have a first port of call for last minute tickets but it does seem strange that none of the major agencies could book the ticket either.
It all worked out in the end but I was wondering does anyone else have any tips in these situations?
So by this time it was about 12:30 and decided bugger it and went out to the airport without a ticket. Check in was well under way with fairly long queues, we headed over to the service desk and asked to buy a ticket and the lady's face there dropped and looked quite worried as we said we needed on that flight. Anyway the part I then found interesting was that they can't actually sell any tickets there. They gave us two phone numbers for two travel agents, so gave the first one a call and it was all booked on the phone with 5 minutes for a reasonable price too. That wasn't the end of it though as the person travelling realised they had forgotten their passport, so it was a mad dash back to the city to pick it up where they then jumped in a cab and headed back out, just getting checked in in time for the flight. So not the most relaxing Saturday!
I suppose from the whole thing the annoying bit is there wasn't anywhere we could find a phone number to book the last minute ticket before heading out to the airport. You would think the airline themselves would want the opportunity to sell these seats. Many people would probably give up and not bother heading to the airport to try. Now we have this agent's contact details we have a first port of call for last minute tickets but it does seem strange that none of the major agencies could book the ticket either.
It all worked out in the end but I was wondering does anyone else have any tips in these situations?
