[stevescoots]

@timTCL, I almost did exact;y that a few yaers ago, booked costa rica instead of CA

[nicksaab]

I used to fly to India a lot on business, one of my regular flights was out of Chennai back to Frankfurt on Lufthansa and it used to leave at 0100 daily – it was very easy to get caught out on the date and occasionally a colleague would just assume that because he was flying out on the 25th for example, he was leaving at night on the 25th, not in the early hours.

[GivingupBA]

nicksaab – “one of my regular flights was out of Chennai back to Frankfurt on Lufthansa and it used to leave at 0100 daily – it was very easy to get caught out on the date”….

Yes, it’s easy-ish. BUT READERS you may not believe this but I had a flight a few years ago [sorry, can’t remember the airline] with a departure time of “Tuesday 0000”. How confusing is that? I figured out it was midnight between Tuesday and Wednesday, but I think airlines shouldn’t do that.

[stevescoots]

Nicksaab, I have done that twice turned up at the wrong time way back in my newbie flying days.

[handbag]

Cedric_Statherby – 28/04/2016 12:35 BST

Handbag I see you also had experience of this US-UK language problem!

It does happen in US UK, but this was actually 2 Indian passengers pronunciation of the words 🙂

No matter how many years I have been flying to the States. 3 words I hate using are Water, Tomatoe and Yogurt. Unfortunately there are not any alternatives I can use.

[AisleSeatTraveller]

an airline or booking website cannot be held responsible for the stupidity of it’s potential customers

[canucklad]

I’ve gotta say that I’m not stupid, but sometimes airline websites are not as clever as their supposed cleverness of the programmers and designers that mange them!

I’ve fallen foul of drop down menu syndrome, refreshers not refreshing, pop up ads hiding important information and I could go on….
These little technical issues had me leaving from Glasgow rather than Edinburgh, and arriving home before I had left!

Fortunately the good and sensible people at both Jet2, and surprisingly Ryanair sorted it all out at no cost. … I now treble check my booking before hitting the confirm button, alas that also means running the risk of the dreaded session timed out message

[MrMichael]

I too got muddled up with the Sunday/Monday thing on website calendars just like Bath VIP. Had a trip out to AMS on FlyBe from Southampton with a return on KLM to LHR two hours before I arrived in AMS! My own fault but infuriating, had to fork out £180 to get back on BA.

[MartynSinclair]

For any 00.01+ departure , for example on a Wednesday, my diary entry & reminder clearly states, go to the airport Tuesday evening.

Only caught out once with the one in BKK but luckily had a kind BA agent who changed my ticket….

[nevereconomy]

BA gives you Manchester NH before Manchester UK, too. I feel very bad for these young people who missed their much awaited and saved for trip. This mistake is not hard to make for an inexperienced person.

[afrance]

Even travel agents have problems … our esteemed work one surprised me one time when they had my flying Norwegian from Stansted to Bergamo… (and yes – they had confirmed BGY in writing as well). I did ask them to confirm that it was the right airline… One could argue that BGO might have been a more sensible code for Bergamo. Fortunately I picked this up when I got the ticket on departure (those were the days)…

But I am far from immune myself – a couple of weeks ago I had to cancel a trip that I had booked, and realised that I had actually booked hotels for the Tuesday night in two different cities and nothing for Wednesday… Let he who is without sin…

[NTarrant]

I tried to check in online for my flight to Amsterdam only to eventually find that I had booked for a month later. Frantically booking a new flight and hotel cost double what I had paid for the next months booking I’d made by mistake. Didn’t cancel it as would have lost everything so did the trip a month later.

In my travel agency days, we had a business client who the secretary was not the sharpest knife in the draw! She phoned and spoke to one of the girls and asked for times of trains to Aberdovey, the girl in the office said she would phone back as she asked my help to give her all the times. We duly worked out all the options and she phoned back and gave the times.

20 minutes later the secretary phoned back, apologising that she got it wrong and she should have asked for times of planes to Abu Dhabi

[IanFromHKG]

GivingupBA – 28/04/2016 14:21 BST : you may not believe this but I had a flight a few years ago [sorry, can’t remember the airline] with a departure time of “Tuesday 0000”. How confusing is that? I figured out it was midnight between Tuesday and Wednesday, but I think airlines shouldn’t do that.

Technically, however, it isn’t. Rounding to the nearest minute, time runs during the day up to 23:59. 60 seconds later, the next day begins with the clock reset to 00:00. So 00:00 Tuesday happens a minute after 23:59 on Monday

This whole issue is something we are very aware of because most long-haul flights to Europe from HK leave shortly before or shortly after midnight. Because we, being human, think that anything after dinner hour (cocktail hour if you’re feeling racy) until you go to bed is the same evening, we are always double-checking which “night” our flight is and frame it in terms of “you have to go to the airport on XX night” rather than whether the flight is before or after midnight

[TheRealBabushka]

That story gave me a good chuckle but it did make me feel sorry for the couple. Although I do wonder if the education system has let them down.
Assuming that IATA airport code is not common knowledge, surely an assessment of the flights selected would have identified a rather short flight across the Atlantic. Some semblance of geography would trigger a thought that the flight may be from Birmingham (Alabama) rather than the Midlands.

[afrance]

The Abu Dhabi story reminds me of the probably apocryphal story about a travel organiser in Essex who was really struggling trying to book a ticket – even finding a destination on a map – and confusing a travel agent. Her Estuary accented boss asked her how he would get to Arijaba.

If you haven’t heard this, try saying it – as it happens the actual destination the guy was travelling to was Rotterdam.

[Author]

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