I worry that this would essentially make it easier for airlines to drop passengers in the long run.
Right now if your EU flight is cancelled you're entitled to a monetary compensation[1] on top getting your ticket money back. I worry that letting the airlines simply not charge you will allow them to wiggle out of this, or make the process to get it even more Byzantine than it already is.
I was one of the folks hit by the massive cancellations in Germany this summer. I'd love this new suggestion.
My flight was canceled a month and 5 days ago. It was to the US and Canada, was canceled 22 hours in advance, and would have been my first time to see my family since the pandemic – more than 3 years.
I spent 3 hours on the phone with the airline trying to find a way to my destination. In the end they offered me nothing. I filed for a refund, and the statutory compensation on the day of my cancellation. I haven't received either. The airline has ignored my dispute filing, and the website where I booked hasn't processed the refund.
A week ago, I filed a chargeback with my credit card. I haven't received any info on that.
Two days ago, I had to spend the time hiring a legal service which processes the statutory EU compensation, but they'll take a third of what I'm due (€600 of the €1800), and say it'll take 2-3 months.
The current system does not work. Even if I do in the end get my refund and compensation, I'll come out roughly break-even on costs, lost my summer vacation, and will be down a dozen hours of effort.
Actually the opposite might happen. Airlines would keep empty seats to sell at a premium at last moment.
A business that rejects customers willing to pay top dollar is suboptimal. The startegy today is to make artificial scarcity. If the customer has more power the strategy changes.
But even though payment has not yet been finalized, you HAVE engaged in a contract with this airline. If airlines start cancelling flights maliciously, they'll be in a lot of trouble.
And even if they're not malicious. A bus company in my country got fined (or, denied millions in subsidies) because they didn't meet their target of bus routes / bus lines (they get subsidies to drive routes that don't pay for themselves). They couldn't get enough bus drivers due to the Panny-D and everything else going on.
The compensation seems to depend on having a ticket (entering into a 'contract' to provide/use a service) and not on the actual date of monetary transaction. Which shifts to check in time from booking time. Compensation for cancellation less that 14 days prior to delivery may still be in place, only the refund could be spared if cancellation happens before check in. There are pre-, on-time-, post- payment services out there working with various obligations to handle exceptions.
Currently if an airline drops you, demanding compensation is a cumbersome process but you can get it. So, e.g., if a flight was booked by too few passengers, the airline has an incentive to still honor the booking.
With this system they might as well say "today numbers don't add up so we just don't fly", and cancel with any excuse.
What's preventing legislation that would keep the same compensation package for cancellation? That the customer did or did not pay in advance doesn't have to impact that.
> I worry that this would essentially make it easier for airlines to drop passengers in the long run.
That should be easy to prevent. It has to be designed so the airline (i.e. the party that holds all the power in this contractual agreement) cannot cancel the contract, but the customer's money can only be collected the moment the flight touches ground on the destination. Like a reserved amount on a credit card that car rentals use.
Flights are already "connected", it should be easy to auto-bill once the destination has been successfully reached.
I'd say airlines should use whatever model they want, as long as they clearly communicate what their policies are.
If you want to overbook like crazy and bump passengers off the plane, you should be free to try that. It's a free market, and no one is forced to fly with you.
The idea is to only charge for flights upon checkin.
There are a myriad of problems with this, to name two:
- an attacker could easily book many flights without checking in. This would cause the airline to fly at a loss.
- customers do not control when checkin starts, airlines do. An airline could easily play tricks (checking 1hr before boarding).
Wrt the 2nd one: this is easily mitigated by having a mandatory eg 2-week period for checkin... but then we're sort of where we are today, just with more uncertainty if the bookers can actually pay for their flights.
> an attacker could easily book many flights without checking in. This would cause the airline to fly at a loss.
An attacker could easilly ask for many ambulances to random addresses, by calling from different phone numbers. They can do the same with the police and fire department, and as a result real people will die because emergency services are not avaliable.
An attacker can book hotels where you pay on arrival. They can order thousands of pizzas with cash payment on delivery.
They can probably do even order a truck full of cement if they can pull off an act.
There are thousands of possible contrived scenarios, life is full of possibilites. You aren't designing an API
This is like 'men will pretend to be transgender and be hanging out in feemale toilets' - random fictitious scenario divorced from reality.
They could implement some intermediary holding account.
Customer pays inn money, airline gets the money when the customer boards the airplane. If the customer does not board the airplane as scheduled, or and the plane has left, airline still gets the money. If customer does not board due to cancelation or similar event, money is refunded back to customer.
With modern payment systems (at least here in Europe), the transfers are more or less instant.
Yeah but you need to provide proof of ID and the like if you book a flight; identity fraud / theft is a big deal, especially when it comes to planes, especially post 9/11. That's Homeland Security / FBI levels of shit the perpetrator would be in. And for the airline, it's just some financial impact.
Re: check-in times, that's easily solved with some legislation.
Meh not so easily, you would probably need multiple cards / identities. And to do it in a way where they can't find/sue afterward does not seem so trivial to me.
It's not like it would be the first industry where it would apply, made many hotel reservation where the payment is done only when checking.
A couple of weeks ago I was on a flight with ryanair in Berlin. We were about to enter the "plane waiting area", you know where Ryanair herds all the people before they go onto a bus.
In front of me was a couple in the beginning of their 20s and none of them had a credit card or even debit card on them, because they had flown this flight a lot of times and they simply brought cash.
Well... their bag was slightly oversized and of course Ryainair wanted them to pay for it. So far so good, but Ryanair ONLY accepts credit cards at this point to pay for your extra luggage, so the flight of the couple was just about to bekome much more stressfull (remember this is 15 minutes before actually leaving with the plane and you literally have nowhere to do it in cash).
If I had not seen that exchange and traded cash for putting my card down, that couple would have had one sad vacation of two weeks.
All in all, airports are not equipped for this influx of "i will pay right now", because simply they are understaffed as is.
If there's a place that doesn't accept cash, it's the place's fault. Cash is what's legal tender, credit cards are the convenience. The airport is absolutely in the wrong here.
I once flew from Switzerland to Thailand with Eurowings. Direct. I've had: US Dollars, Swiss Franks and Thai baat on me. As well as a digital credit card.
For some reason the airline would only accept Euros and Physical credit cards. I literally got 3 small bottles of water for free and 1 beer my neighbor invited me on the whole 14 hour flight.
That sounds... overly complicated (from Ryanair's thing); they have the customers' details (passport, address, payment details), just send them a bill or have them sign a promise of payment and send them on their way.
The difference is when they charge the card you used for reserving the ticket. On booking or later. Forget this 'paying for your extra bag' kind of thing which is a different matter.
I had a similar situation with Ryanair.
It wasn't the baggage I had to pay for, it was the check-in, which I had already done the night before and even had a confirmation email, but they just wouldn't even look at my phone.
Then there was the credit card issue, and I had to run through the airport asking people to pay for me in exchange for cash.
You could say it was pretty stressful since the gate was closing in 30 minutes.
Did anyone actually read the article? This is not about literally paying at the check-in, nor is it about not having to pay if you do not check in. It's merely about delaying the payment transaction until check-in/departure time, so that in case the flight gets canceled beforehand, the customer does not have to request a refunding (which, as we all know, can be very cumbersome) but simply won't pay in the first place.
This is a terrible idea. Many people fly on tickets bought by other people. E.g. business travelers, children flying alone. So for all of those passengers, they will not be able to pay at the airport.
Moreover, not everybody is plumbed into the German banking system. If you came to Germany from abroad, is your foreign debit card going to work at the airport? Who knows!
It’s unreasonable for passengers to not know if they will be able to pay for the flight, until 3 hours before. What if their bank’s anti-fraud puts a hold on the payment? What do they expect passengers to do, get on the phone to their bank while at the check in counter?
Payment is made in advance to give passengers time to resolve payment issues. It is mutually beneficial for passengers and airlines.
How would an airline capacity plan with just a reservation? Seems like a backwards approach to just mandating the airline pay you back if they fail to provide service
In this context and under German law, a reservation would be an enforceable contract between passenger and airline. If a passenger does not show up, the airline can sue for payment. Hence the proposal mostly shifts the burden of litigation to the airline.
In Germany, airlines have a strong incentive to refuse any refund. Courts are very slow to render decisions and the worst that can happen is being ordered to refund the original amount. Behaviour-correcting damages do not exist under German law. In combination this deters some passengers from pursuing their claim.
Edit: Airlines would also be ordered to pay court and lawyer fees which could be construed incentivising. Yet both fees are statutory capped and quite low for the average ticket price.
The whole thing came up because airlines don't pay back customers in a timely manner. It can takes months to get your money back from airlines even when the airline is fully at fault.
> “Everyone must be aware that at the time of booking you are entering into a contract of carriage that is subject to certain conditions, such as no-show and/or rebooking fees.”
They are mandated to pay you back if they fail to provide service. However, that doesn't help you in case of a bankruptcy. Paying months ahead is basically giving the airline an unsecured loan and lots of German consumers were hit when Air Berling went bankrupt. Under German bankruptcy laws even a credit card chargeback won't help you, that money is mostly gone.
"How would an airline capacity plan with just a reservation?"
Responsibly perhaps?
So they make the most effort to make sure the service is delivered since it will only be paid if they can deliver? I know it is a novelty idea paying for only the received service when received, something never been used throughout the history before as one always had to pay well in advance and then may or may not receive the service paid for, but perhaps we could get used to this very novel and revolutionary idea, no? : )
I believe this paying for something not delivered yet and run circles getting back if not delivered at all on the agreed terms is in the benefit of the airlines. Being abused many many times. Otherwise we wouldn't have needed extensive and stict regulations about compensations. This may change. There is a desire for it from customers.
Never mind that --- how am I supposed to plan a time critical journey if I don't know in advance if I'll actually have a seat on the plane?
This kind of pay-on-the-spot only works when there's tons of capacity, if you don't take this one, you'll get the next, no problem, and where the provider doesn't need 100% usage, i.e. where costs are incremental rather than fixed.
And airplane fails that criteria in both ways. This plan is bad for both airline and customer.
Interesting! While the idea definitely offers advantages, I'd be keen to know what changes would have to be done in the Departure Control Systems (DCS). There needs to be connection to Customer Management (CML), Reservations (RES), Ticketing (TKT), Payment (PAY), etc...
I was employed with Amadeus Data Systems for more than 10 years, have left during COVID period.
This sounds like a big effort. I wonder how Lufthansa pulled this off in 2021...
> “The booking systems would have to be programmed and supplemented accordingly in order to enable the ‘pay as you check-in’ solution and make it the standard,” Carnier said.
Spoken like a true software engineer.
From my experience with people booking and taking appointments I can assure you, the airlines would be out of business within a month. If there is no upfront payment people just won't show up. Nobody cares anymore. The average person is too unreliable these days.
Important context: Credit cards are still much less common in Germany, and banks are not exactly very consumer-friendly when it comes to processing chargebacks.
Anyone paying a flight ticket with a non-disputable payment method (or one where the reversal period times out after 8 weeks, such as SEPA direct debit) is pretty much at the mercy of the airline voluntarily (or through legal action) returning the money. I've been waiting for 10 months for a similar reimbursement now...
When the country's second-largest airline went bankrupt in 2017, many banks refused to file chargebacks due to legal uncertainty around whether doing so might be considered unlawful interference with the bankruptcy proceedings. (The bankruptcy manager fueled these by actually sending out invoices supporting that claim.)
In the context of credit/most debit card paid tickets, this is largely a non-issue, since cancelled flights (in addition to merchant bankruptcy) are usually explicitly covered under the "service not provided" chargeback provisions of the schemes.
So, I might be wrong, but I don’t think there’s a single airline on earth that is consistently minting high profits—the most profitable airline (delta) earns 10% margins…in a good year.
Do we really need to make airline businesses even harder to run?
If passengers really saw value in the PAYF model, any airline with growth ambitions (eg. Ryanair) could take massive market share by implementing. The free market already solves this.
The fact that it’s uncommon tells me non-business travelers don’t see much value in it.
This is essentially how rental cars generally work in the US.
Both planes and hotels essentially almost always require credit cards. Hotels seem to have mostly liberalized cancelation policies--which had been starting to require more notice. And flights seem to be less likely to have fairly high e.g. $200 fees associated with changes.
Coincidentally, I'm finishing my second week as a consultant on a check-in modernization project for an airline. Most airlines are still using systems from 20+ years ago, and while they mostly work, they are EOL from the vendor.
Anyway, this change would throw a wrench in this project's plans, but at least they have something in progress that can track it. For airlines that haven't yet started or even planning to replace the old system, they are going to have to scramble.
Airlines already collect money when you check in in many cases: seat/class upgrades (both pushed by the airlines check-in process to up revenue) and extra bags, and a few other things. Moving the payment collection for the ticket itself to time-of-reservation to time-of-check-in would take work, but probably not totally upend the modernization plan.
Another stupid idea by politicians who try to fix the service they don't understand.
“The subsequent bureaucracy of cancelling ticket bookings and transferring the money back would be over with.”
Good one. I had a flight (DUS 2 MUC) cancelled yesterday (due to strikes).
Two clicks in the app, and the money was back in my account 20 minutes later.
This law will only do 2 things:
a) Increase prices for tickets
b) Will create a lot of friction. Just imaging you credit card being stolen/lost a day before the flight. Or you accidentally spending your credit on something else before the money is taken.
If you buy a cinema ticket for next weeks premiere, do you want to pay now, and have the ticket safe, or pay when you actually go to the cinema.
It‘s a stupid idea with all kinds of problems. What if, for some reason, your bank account is empty or your CC is over the limit at the time of departure. The transaction might fail and your flight will be canceled hours before departure. You won’t be able to book some other flight on such short notice, etc.pp..
There is a much easier fix. You give the airlines 2 weeks to refund the money. The have to refund it without any forms etc. because the damn well know who booked and paid a flight they canceled. Every day the overrun the 2 weeks, the refund is automatically increased by 5 percent. I have no doubt, 99% of refunds will be paid out after two weeks.
People seem to be focussing on the difficulty of dealing with reservations...
But I see this model may be intended to get rid of reservations and maybe schedules entirely.
If you see an advert that says "Fly to Berlin for €50.99", then you show up to the airport, see that there is a flight departing in 20 minutes, tap your card to pay the advertised price, and hop on the plane. If the plane is full, you wait for the next one in 2 hours.
Airlines by now have good models of passenger flow, by looking at national holidays, sports events, holiday seasons, etc, so they should be able to get most flights full but not overfull.
Basically the same pricing model as city busses. And it works fine there.
I think the only way is a reliable third party (like the booking company) where the customer still owns the money but it is temporal locked for the airline till like flight + 1h or so.
Like the airline has a guarantee that the money shows up at the moment where it is needed and in doubt we could also have a system where the no-show fee can be "sub-locked".
The consumer on the other hand, never waives the money over until he is needed to (by confirming to the no-show or actually flying).
Similar systems exists for example for Visa guarantees. Interestingly, considering other success rates the airline should do they same for their punishment if they cancel ;)
[+] [-] ginko|3 years ago|reply
Right now if your EU flight is cancelled you're entitled to a monetary compensation[1] on top getting your ticket money back. I worry that letting the airlines simply not charge you will allow them to wiggle out of this, or make the process to get it even more Byzantine than it already is.
[1] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...
[+] [-] wheels|3 years ago|reply
My flight was canceled a month and 5 days ago. It was to the US and Canada, was canceled 22 hours in advance, and would have been my first time to see my family since the pandemic – more than 3 years.
I spent 3 hours on the phone with the airline trying to find a way to my destination. In the end they offered me nothing. I filed for a refund, and the statutory compensation on the day of my cancellation. I haven't received either. The airline has ignored my dispute filing, and the website where I booked hasn't processed the refund.
A week ago, I filed a chargeback with my credit card. I haven't received any info on that.
Two days ago, I had to spend the time hiring a legal service which processes the statutory EU compensation, but they'll take a third of what I'm due (€600 of the €1800), and say it'll take 2-3 months.
The current system does not work. Even if I do in the end get my refund and compensation, I'll come out roughly break-even on costs, lost my summer vacation, and will be down a dozen hours of effort.
[+] [-] kashkhan|3 years ago|reply
A business that rejects customers willing to pay top dollar is suboptimal. The startegy today is to make artificial scarcity. If the customer has more power the strategy changes.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|3 years ago|reply
And even if they're not malicious. A bus company in my country got fined (or, denied millions in subsidies) because they didn't meet their target of bus routes / bus lines (they get subsidies to drive routes that don't pay for themselves). They couldn't get enough bus drivers due to the Panny-D and everything else going on.
[+] [-] mihaaly|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Al-Khwarizmi|3 years ago|reply
Currently if an airline drops you, demanding compensation is a cumbersome process but you can get it. So, e.g., if a flight was booked by too few passengers, the airline has an incentive to still honor the booking.
With this system they might as well say "today numbers don't add up so we just don't fly", and cancel with any excuse.
[+] [-] ysavir|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] suction|3 years ago|reply
That should be easy to prevent. It has to be designed so the airline (i.e. the party that holds all the power in this contractual agreement) cannot cancel the contract, but the customer's money can only be collected the moment the flight touches ground on the destination. Like a reserved amount on a credit card that car rentals use.
Flights are already "connected", it should be easy to auto-bill once the destination has been successfully reached.
[+] [-] eru|3 years ago|reply
If you want to overbook like crazy and bump passengers off the plane, you should be free to try that. It's a free market, and no one is forced to fly with you.
[+] [-] Beldin|3 years ago|reply
There are a myriad of problems with this, to name two:
- an attacker could easily book many flights without checking in. This would cause the airline to fly at a loss.
- customers do not control when checkin starts, airlines do. An airline could easily play tricks (checking 1hr before boarding).
Wrt the 2nd one: this is easily mitigated by having a mandatory eg 2-week period for checkin... but then we're sort of where we are today, just with more uncertainty if the bookers can actually pay for their flights.
So, not a big fan.
[+] [-] ClumsyPilot|3 years ago|reply
An attacker could easilly ask for many ambulances to random addresses, by calling from different phone numbers. They can do the same with the police and fire department, and as a result real people will die because emergency services are not avaliable.
An attacker can book hotels where you pay on arrival. They can order thousands of pizzas with cash payment on delivery. They can probably do even order a truck full of cement if they can pull off an act.
There are thousands of possible contrived scenarios, life is full of possibilites. You aren't designing an API
This is like 'men will pretend to be transgender and be hanging out in feemale toilets' - random fictitious scenario divorced from reality.
[+] [-] TrackerFF|3 years ago|reply
Customer pays inn money, airline gets the money when the customer boards the airplane. If the customer does not board the airplane as scheduled, or and the plane has left, airline still gets the money. If customer does not board due to cancelation or similar event, money is refunded back to customer.
With modern payment systems (at least here in Europe), the transfers are more or less instant.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|3 years ago|reply
Re: check-in times, that's easily solved with some legislation.
[+] [-] Timshel|3 years ago|reply
It's not like it would be the first industry where it would apply, made many hotel reservation where the payment is done only when checking.
[+] [-] jhoelzel|3 years ago|reply
In front of me was a couple in the beginning of their 20s and none of them had a credit card or even debit card on them, because they had flown this flight a lot of times and they simply brought cash.
Well... their bag was slightly oversized and of course Ryainair wanted them to pay for it. So far so good, but Ryanair ONLY accepts credit cards at this point to pay for your extra luggage, so the flight of the couple was just about to bekome much more stressfull (remember this is 15 minutes before actually leaving with the plane and you literally have nowhere to do it in cash).
If I had not seen that exchange and traded cash for putting my card down, that couple would have had one sad vacation of two weeks.
All in all, airports are not equipped for this influx of "i will pay right now", because simply they are understaffed as is.
[+] [-] stavros|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] herbst|3 years ago|reply
For some reason the airline would only accept Euros and Physical credit cards. I literally got 3 small bottles of water for free and 1 beer my neighbor invited me on the whole 14 hour flight.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mihaaly|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m4ki|3 years ago|reply
You could say it was pretty stressful since the gate was closing in 30 minutes.
[+] [-] lwde|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codethief|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zarzavat|3 years ago|reply
Moreover, not everybody is plumbed into the German banking system. If you came to Germany from abroad, is your foreign debit card going to work at the airport? Who knows!
It’s unreasonable for passengers to not know if they will be able to pay for the flight, until 3 hours before. What if their bank’s anti-fraud puts a hold on the payment? What do they expect passengers to do, get on the phone to their bank while at the check in counter?
Payment is made in advance to give passengers time to resolve payment issues. It is mutually beneficial for passengers and airlines.
[+] [-] justWells|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nehalem|3 years ago|reply
In Germany, airlines have a strong incentive to refuse any refund. Courts are very slow to render decisions and the worst that can happen is being ordered to refund the original amount. Behaviour-correcting damages do not exist under German law. In combination this deters some passengers from pursuing their claim.
Edit: Airlines would also be ordered to pay court and lawyer fees which could be construed incentivising. Yet both fees are statutory capped and quite low for the average ticket price.
[+] [-] foepys|3 years ago|reply
The whole thing came up because airlines don't pay back customers in a timely manner. It can takes months to get your money back from airlines even when the airline is fully at fault.
[+] [-] asdajksah2123|3 years ago|reply
> “Everyone must be aware that at the time of booking you are entering into a contract of carriage that is subject to certain conditions, such as no-show and/or rebooking fees.”
[+] [-] skrause|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mihaaly|3 years ago|reply
Responsibly perhaps?
So they make the most effort to make sure the service is delivered since it will only be paid if they can deliver? I know it is a novelty idea paying for only the received service when received, something never been used throughout the history before as one always had to pay well in advance and then may or may not receive the service paid for, but perhaps we could get used to this very novel and revolutionary idea, no? : )
I believe this paying for something not delivered yet and run circles getting back if not delivered at all on the agreed terms is in the benefit of the airlines. Being abused many many times. Otherwise we wouldn't have needed extensive and stict regulations about compensations. This may change. There is a desire for it from customers.
[+] [-] ars|3 years ago|reply
This kind of pay-on-the-spot only works when there's tons of capacity, if you don't take this one, you'll get the next, no problem, and where the provider doesn't need 100% usage, i.e. where costs are incremental rather than fixed.
And airplane fails that criteria in both ways. This plan is bad for both airline and customer.
[+] [-] markeibes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] physicsguy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cm2187|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkellermann|3 years ago|reply
I was employed with Amadeus Data Systems for more than 10 years, have left during COVID period.
This sounds like a big effort. I wonder how Lufthansa pulled this off in 2021...
[+] [-] dna_polymerase|3 years ago|reply
Spoken like a true software engineer.
From my experience with people booking and taking appointments I can assure you, the airlines would be out of business within a month. If there is no upfront payment people just won't show up. Nobody cares anymore. The average person is too unreliable these days.
[+] [-] notahacker|3 years ago|reply
And not a software engineer who's worked on airline PSS systems :D
[+] [-] lxgr|3 years ago|reply
Anyone paying a flight ticket with a non-disputable payment method (or one where the reversal period times out after 8 weeks, such as SEPA direct debit) is pretty much at the mercy of the airline voluntarily (or through legal action) returning the money. I've been waiting for 10 months for a similar reimbursement now...
When the country's second-largest airline went bankrupt in 2017, many banks refused to file chargebacks due to legal uncertainty around whether doing so might be considered unlawful interference with the bankruptcy proceedings. (The bankruptcy manager fueled these by actually sending out invoices supporting that claim.)
In the context of credit/most debit card paid tickets, this is largely a non-issue, since cancelled flights (in addition to merchant bankruptcy) are usually explicitly covered under the "service not provided" chargeback provisions of the schemes.
[+] [-] TheMechanist|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kipters|3 years ago|reply
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_Compensation_Regulation
[+] [-] d1sxeyes|3 years ago|reply
The airline will still have a legal obligation to compensate (in relevant cases).
[+] [-] pembrook|3 years ago|reply
Do we really need to make airline businesses even harder to run?
If passengers really saw value in the PAYF model, any airline with growth ambitions (eg. Ryanair) could take massive market share by implementing. The free market already solves this.
The fact that it’s uncommon tells me non-business travelers don’t see much value in it.
[+] [-] bzxcvbn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghaff|3 years ago|reply
Both planes and hotels essentially almost always require credit cards. Hotels seem to have mostly liberalized cancelation policies--which had been starting to require more notice. And flights seem to be less likely to have fairly high e.g. $200 fees associated with changes.
[+] [-] quickthrower2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cratermoon|3 years ago|reply
Anyway, this change would throw a wrench in this project's plans, but at least they have something in progress that can track it. For airlines that haven't yet started or even planning to replace the old system, they are going to have to scramble.
Airlines already collect money when you check in in many cases: seat/class upgrades (both pushed by the airlines check-in process to up revenue) and extra bags, and a few other things. Moving the payment collection for the ticket itself to time-of-reservation to time-of-check-in would take work, but probably not totally upend the modernization plan.
[+] [-] not_me_ever|3 years ago|reply
“The subsequent bureaucracy of cancelling ticket bookings and transferring the money back would be over with.” Good one. I had a flight (DUS 2 MUC) cancelled yesterday (due to strikes). Two clicks in the app, and the money was back in my account 20 minutes later.
This law will only do 2 things: a) Increase prices for tickets b) Will create a lot of friction. Just imaging you credit card being stolen/lost a day before the flight. Or you accidentally spending your credit on something else before the money is taken.
If you buy a cinema ticket for next weeks premiere, do you want to pay now, and have the ticket safe, or pay when you actually go to the cinema.
[+] [-] coffeeblack|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dr_faustus|3 years ago|reply
There is a much easier fix. You give the airlines 2 weeks to refund the money. The have to refund it without any forms etc. because the damn well know who booked and paid a flight they canceled. Every day the overrun the 2 weeks, the refund is automatically increased by 5 percent. I have no doubt, 99% of refunds will be paid out after two weeks.
[+] [-] londons_explore|3 years ago|reply
But I see this model may be intended to get rid of reservations and maybe schedules entirely.
If you see an advert that says "Fly to Berlin for €50.99", then you show up to the airport, see that there is a flight departing in 20 minutes, tap your card to pay the advertised price, and hop on the plane. If the plane is full, you wait for the next one in 2 hours.
Airlines by now have good models of passenger flow, by looking at national holidays, sports events, holiday seasons, etc, so they should be able to get most flights full but not overfull.
Basically the same pricing model as city busses. And it works fine there.
[+] [-] oaiey|3 years ago|reply
Like the airline has a guarantee that the money shows up at the moment where it is needed and in doubt we could also have a system where the no-show fee can be "sub-locked".
The consumer on the other hand, never waives the money over until he is needed to (by confirming to the no-show or actually flying).
Similar systems exists for example for Visa guarantees. Interestingly, considering other success rates the airline should do they same for their punishment if they cancel ;)