Recently my mother flew into town on Tango for some routine surgery. She recovered for a day, then I drove her to the airport for her trip back. I parked the car, escorted her over to the Air Canada counter and made sure she got a wheel chair and special assistance on to the flight.<\/p>\n
We actually arrived an hour and a half before the flight, and the ticket was booked 3 months in advance, so I was quite shocked when the Air Canada service agent lady at the counter said that the flight had been oversold.<\/p>\n
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Now, I've never really understood the whole process of overselling flights, in fact I always thought it was the result of inefficient booking systems (or at least that's what the airline would have you believe), but with modern multi-$million computer reseveration systems, overselling should be a thing of the past, no?<\/p>\n
The agent at the counter felt quite bad about it, but said that there is a good chance that a seat would come up for my mother. So while we were waiting for the wheelchair to arrive, I made a phone call to the AC reservation line.<\/p>\n
It took 2 spearate phone calls with 2 different booking agents, but the story I managed to piece together was this: Apparently, when my mother booked her flight on the Air Canada web site, she was presented with an option to purchase - for a $15.00 fee - the privilege of selecting her seat on the plane in advance, the process of which is described here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Apparently, this little frill would also guarantee a seat in cases of overselling, but this is not obvious from the description.<\/p>\n Mom of course doesn't recall seeing any such message, and even if she did, I'm sure that the implications of not purchasing wouldn't have been that clear. After all, isn't it any consumers' reasonable assumption that airline sales work on a first-come-first-served basis, and if an airline ticket is booked months in advance, and the web site sells you the ticket, then the ticket is more or less honoured by the airline?<\/p>\n Not so, says Air Canada. Since you're getting such a good deal on that ticket from their discount airline, everything becomes an extra, such as food, peanuts... and even the seat.<\/p>\n For more information on Air Canada overselling, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently my mother flew into town on Tango for some routine surgery. She recovered for a day, then I drove her to the airport for her trip back. I parked the car, escorted her over to the Air Canada counter and made sure she got a wheel chair and special assistance on to the flight. … Continue reading