# aer lingus cancelled flights.



## oldnick (28 Aug 2009)

A word of warning about anyone booking an EI flight.

You all know how how badly EI is doing and that many routes will be dropped  or reduced.

So -don't make any commitments -especially financial ones to hotels -based on a flight to XYZ on the  XYZ February.
It may be cancelled. 

Obviously the top destinations will be less affected,but less popular destinations like Alicante (which today I was told would suffer a big reduction in capacity) will certainly suffer.

..and don't think Ryanair and other airlines will be immune from cuts.
This coming Winter will be a bloodbath for airlines, travel agents, tour operators etc.

(the only good thing is that in ireland travel agents and tour operators are bonded so a cancellation or closing down of the bsuiness means you won't lose any money. )

So, (unless booking thru a travel agency) don't pre-pay accommodation until very close to date of departure.


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## jhegarty (28 Aug 2009)

Any chance you are a travel agent ?


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## oldnick (28 Aug 2009)

Never hidden the fact !

Mind you ,I would add that booking with a travel agent does not guarantee against the disappointment/hassle of changing one's plans once confronted with an airlines cancelling flights or going bankrupt(which 20 low cost carriers have done this year).

It does however guarantee your money's safe. But,of course, the usual reply to my waffle is "well, I've never had a problem booking direct ".


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## undo (28 Aug 2009)

Would the optional travel insurance Aer Lingus offer not cover their bankruptcy as well? I glanced over the terms and they certainly do mention delays - might have something for cancelled flights as well. If so, anyone worried could just buy the insurance; I imagine it would be cheaper than the markup travel agencies add.


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## csirl (28 Aug 2009)

I know someone who works for the Aviation Regulator. Says that travel agents going bust is a much bigger risk right now than airlines going bust.


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## bond-007 (28 Aug 2009)

Well Aerlingus have a sale on every week now. They seem desperate to get the money in the bank.


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## samanthajane (28 Aug 2009)

Aerlingus shot themselves in the foot with that before. 

Always offering cheap flights that you could never find. I've lost count of the number of emails that i used to recieve tell me i'd get a flight for 9.99 and i never could find one after ages of looking. 

Their e-mail now go straight into my junk folder and i dont even bother looking on their website anymore if i need flights.


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## annet (28 Aug 2009)

On a related issue - if you cancel a flight with this airline - they have now introduced another fleeze the taxpayer - by uping the €20 per ticket admin fee (which was dubious in the first instance) for applications for tax refunds to €20 per flight for applications for tax refunds. Unfair terms in relation to a consumer contract ie. it places the airline at an undue advantage over the consumer.  Does Aer Lingus declare these admin fees that are deducted and collected from taxes paid as actual INCOME EARNED in their annual returns to revenue?


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## so-crates (28 Aug 2009)

From current behaviour Aer Lingus would seem to be giving plenty of notice for routes they are discontinuing so unless they go bust I don't see this as a particular problem. Worth considering perhaps but hardly a major issue. 
Quite a few of the airlines appear to be rather high-handed when it comes to "administration" costs for refunds (personal favourite is RyanAir - they only ever list it as a "reasonable" administration cost on their website, I've spent a while looking for what the monetary value of reasonable is!). I'd agree it would be nice to not feel like you are being ripped off when it comes to these charges - it certainly feels like they most likely outcome is that the airline simply pockets the charges.
As for airline sales, Aer Lingus are hardly alone in pushing these sales. All airlines are noticing the drop in passenger numbers, hence the number of routes that are being cut. Contrary to Samanthajane's experience I have on some occassions found these sale prices. The airline I find that presents the most difficulty in that regard is BMI - I have never found their advertised sales (but then again I am usually looking at the Heathrow route so I just assume they are snapped up pretty much so immediately). Might be easier to unsubscribe from the junk mail, better for the environment


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## oldnick (29 Aug 2009)

Some points from a greedy travel agent...

1. Insurance that covers bankruptcy of a company -such as mentioned by "undo" only covers the cost of what was spent on that particular conpany -not other costs of other expenses such as paying for accommodation/ cruise etc and then not being able to avail of it due to an airline cancellation/failure. 
The client has to find alternative routes to get to the hotel/cruise etc or else cancel; -either way its a cost that no insurance I know of covers.

All I am saying is that it is not a good idea to pay in advance for anything based on the reliability of a flight -whether its a villa in Orlando or a cruise leaving from Naples.
If that flight is cancelled or the airline goes broke how easy is it to get the money back from the villa owner etc ?

2. As regards the comment made by the person who works for the aviation regulator :-  Of course more travel agents will go bust than airlines. There are 30.000 travel agents in Europe compared to 80 airlines. 300 Irish travel agents -and only two Irish airlines (O.K.three including Air Aran).
Half of the two main airlines is losing a fortune and is cutting one-third of its flights.

3.I wonder if the aviation regulator person pointed out that if a travel agent goes bust the person who paid money to that travel agent gets it back from the government including accommodation etc booked. 

Look  guys -persons like you and me who use boards are usually internet savvy and most of us enjoy and are experienced at spending time searching for travel deals -flights,accommodation etc.  
Many people are not that experienced and will make expensive cock-ups, including booking,say, a flight to XYZ and paying out money to a villa owner -and then finding out the flight has been cancelled or changed by a few days. I have had so many people  telling me this -and I know there'll be a lot more in the next few months with impending cancellations.

Finally, i note that some European Commissioner was in the news today discussing proposals to make internet bookings "safer" and introduce a bonding/licensing system -like the one we have to pay a fortune for each year.

Sorry for the tiresome rant. 
When i was younger I did other things at this time of night !


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## Leper (29 Aug 2009)

Old Nick makes a lot of sense.  He is in the travel industry and in the section that will be most be hit by the forthcoming massacre.  On the other hand I am a holiday home owner who occasionally rents out the apartment.

Over the years I have noticed that more and more people are using privatively booked holidays.  Consequently, many holiday home owners have built up contacts and now don’t need even to advertise. 

I would expect that owners should behave in a decent manner when dealing with their clients. You might say – “Hey Lep, Easy to Say, but let’s get real here.” Therefore, I wish to point out the following and hope it will be of help:-


If you book through a website, it is likely that you will be dealing with an owner living outside of Ireland.  [Less chance of getting your money back, I didn’t say No Chance]
Booking through an Agent is not much better.  Agents work off of percentage commission and will want to be paid.  Some of them are unscrupulous [Little Chance of getting your money back and nearly all operate outside of Ireland]
If you deal directly with an owner you should not have to pay months in advance (and might not have to even pay a deposit). Furthermore, you probably will get a cheaper holiday. Most owners recognise that there might not be flights from say Knock to Murcia in the coming year and that some holidays will be cancelled.[ For example I don’t take deposits unless really necessary]
If you don’t know the owner, it would be prudent to deal with one who lives in Ireland. [Owners don’t wish any untoward publicity and need repeat business]


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## undo (30 Aug 2009)

Even when booking all pieces of a holiday separately, it is still easy to make sure you do not have to pay for accommodation if your flight is cancelled: Just book a cancellable rate. With HRS, you can usually cancel until 6pm of the day before your scheduled arrival with a €0 penalty. With Expedia, they charge you some small fee. With Hostelworld, they keep your 10% deposit. Really, the risk is very slim (or zero, in the case of HRS). No need to pay travel agent markup. Travel agents always strike me as something from a pre-Internet past...


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## bond-007 (30 Aug 2009)

> Travel agents always strike me as something from a pre-Internet past...


Yes, they are a remnant from a by gone era that just won't go away. But as long as Budget Travel exists travel agents will still exist.


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## oldnick (30 Aug 2009)

Please people (undo/Bond) just give me an idea of what you believe is the average "travel agent mark-up".

(As regards Budget Travel -the sooner they cease trading, the happier will travel agents be).

As regards no-risk booking on the internet you should contact the European Commissioner who is taking steps to introduce bonding for all suppliers of travel services on the internet. Your advice would be invaluable.
Just quite how the E.U. proposes to protect consumers booking on the internet is beyond me, but the point is that there appears to be many people across Europe that have been left in the lurch when booking on the internet.
Obviously those people were idiots and no protection is needed.

However, I admit that the internet does negate the need for many suppliers of products and services. There does seem little reason for travel agents, auctioneers, lawyers, accountants etc  to have shops/offices. Supermarkets can be shopped on line- as can most shop. Books,newspapers are really redundant. The list goes on.
Probably 50% of all jobs can be done online. 
(well, actually 50% of all jobs would disappear -and half the rest could be done on-line)

All this would mean less commuting- less cars,buses etc - and, best of all, we'd have far less contact with other people. This would be especially true with more interactive facilities such as ever clever Wii-type gizmos or big screens where we could virtually be with friends and families without the hassle of actually going to visit and meet with them.

As for the fools who go into cafes and restaurants and pay for drink and food; they could cut out the middle man and eat and drink at home for a quarter of the prices!

Do everything at home/on the internet and you'd save a load of money such as the enormous mark-up travel agents make ! 

And as for the less computer-savvy people, older people, those without plastic cards, those who can only pay off a tenner a week, or those who like to come in and chat for ages about a possible holiday. Well, ....  them - "they are a remnant from a by-gone era that just won't go away ".

They really should be extinct.

As, to be honest, I soon may be.


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## Grizzly (30 Aug 2009)

A lot of the chain hotels will offer you a Hot Deal rate if you pay up front with your credit card. I have used this and received a pretty good discount on a room rate quite often with breakfast thrown in.
Looking at both Ryanair and Aer Lingus it would appear that as and from November a lot of destinations are being axed and the prices to the popular sun destinations are being increased. 
I got Faro and Nice late last year for peanuts. No chance this year.


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## undo (30 Aug 2009)

At work, it used to be that we had to book all our flights through travel agents. I was one of the many people disobeying that rule as all we were booking was Aer Lingus and Ryanair anyway and it is pointless to have someone else click through the airline's website and then charge you for that. If I remember correctly, the markup was around €30 per flight for *absolutely nothing*. Also, it took several days for your flight request to be forwarded to the travel agent by which time the offer you were aiming at was often gone already. And finally, when booking myself, I can add my frequent flyer number. When booking through travel agents, there was no provision for this.

 The higher-ups seem to have copped on. Now, the rules are book through travel agents or a budget airline directly.

 But we were talking mostly about holidays, so let me move on from work travel: I have been booking holidays myself for ages now and never needed the help of a travel agent. I did try this year as I was going to Russia and organizing the visa is tricky. Well, it turned out the brick-and-mortar place specializing on travel to Russia here in Dublin first of all could not help me because I am a UK citizen, second would have charged me a fortune and third would have sent me to the consulate in person to sort it out... I went with an Internet company, mailed them my passport and got it back with a visa inside for a fraction of the cost. Sorry, high street travel agents really are a thing of the past. I used to believe their experience would help with tricky, complicated cases - but I have learned otherwise time and time again. All they seem to do is sell overpriced cruises, flights and hotels to people who do not know any better. Fair enough, that is the service they offer and if people are willing to pay for it, such are the workings of a market economy. But I would not be surprised, as more people cop on how Internet bookings work, if less and less walk into a travel agent to book a flight.

 Of course older/less tech savvy people will have a harder time. But guess what, they will do what they always do in such situations: Ask their kids. I am a computer scientist and of course I have turned into the entire family's go-to guy for tech problems. Same goes for Internet bookings, eBay transactions, Amazon and the like... If they cannot figure out how it works, they ring me. I may not like it, but this is what people naturally do - ask someone in their family who might be able to help rather than talk to a travel agent, having to pay to get the same questions answered.

 I certainly feel your pain - you were offering a service that seemed important and valuable but that you are suddenly finding is no longer required. The world keeps changing, services become obsolete. There used to be a guy operating the pump at each petrol station. He got cut. There used to be a guy selling tickets on every tram/bus. He got cut. There used to be travel agents. They, eventually, will disappear as well... People have learned how to fill their tank, how to get tram/bus tickets - they will learn how to get airline tickets as well. And the upside is, this frees up more money to spend on fun things. Restaurants will not suffer, they will benefit from people having more money in their pocket to go out for a meal rather than spending it on an overpriced holiday.

 As a final point, I for sure actually enjoy the bargain hunt on the Internet. This may not be true for everyone, but I do choose my destinations by where I can get a return flight for less than €30. I did book a dozen hotels using Expedia's £40-off-a-night promotion. I booked even more using HotelClub's $50-off-a-night promotion last year. I never got a rental car from any of the big companies as there always is a cheaper small place... Travel agents do not offer me the flexibility to do any of this. I know for a fact that given my budget, I could have done maybe 20 trips if I booked through travel agents. Booking over the Internet and using each promotion to its very limit, I got almost a 100 trips for the same money.


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## peteb (30 Aug 2009)

c'mon Undo. Use some paragraphs please, im begging!


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## undo (30 Aug 2009)

I did use paragraphs... the forum glued it all back together into one huge paragraph. I edited it to add paragraphs again - do they not show up for you?


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## BeanPole (30 Aug 2009)

Good post undo. I've never seen the value added by a high street travel agent, when its so much quicker and easier to book directly on the web. The prices are also a whole lot more transparent too.

It seems to be an Irish thing to rely on "brokers" for everything and anything. Are we complete gombeens sometimes? I remember the now defunct REA mortgage brokers on here years ago, at the height of the boom, making out that finding a mortgage was something beyond the wit of the ordinary man. Mercifully, they have gone to the wall.

We, as a people, should really question the need as to why we need a middleman to hold our hand on simple things like booking a flight or finding a mortgage


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## John Rambo (30 Aug 2009)

I'm not sure that the views of people who use a site like AAM are representative of those of the general population. AAM members are probably more likely to do the leg work themselves whether it's securing a mortgage or booking a holiday. There is still a role for "facilitators" such as travel agents and mortgage brokers for those who either cannot organise these things themselves or simply don't have the time.


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## bond-007 (30 Aug 2009)

> We, as a people, should really question the need as to why we need a middleman to hold our hand on simple things like booking a flight or finding a mortgage


I agree with you 100%. 

Why must we use middlemen for everything? As said it is a typically Irish attitude. 

There used to be a certain UK based tour operator that had an exclusive agent here that you had to use. Of course you could not get the same prices and you had to take their own very expensive insurance, of course any insurance you had yourself was not good enough for them. Well feck that is what I said and I booked direct myself using a friends address in the UK. Saved an absolute fortune doing that.

With the internet the travel agent is a thing of the past.


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## Leper (30 Aug 2009)

Hold on Guys.  We need Travel Agents.  Even the internet needs competition. It gets back to the town with two petrol stations.  One sells petrol cheaper than the other.  That one does all the business and consequently the dearer one closes down.  Now the town has one petrol station and Guess What? - They can now charge as much as they like.  We need Travel Agents.


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## TLC (30 Aug 2009)

I have found that when something goes wrong when you book through a travel agent they always answer - it was the airline/hotel etc.  Infact the reason I started booking things myself was that I was very badly let down on a holiday I booked & was offered a 30 Euro voucher for my trouble!  I also have found that I can get a better class of accomodation abroad booking myself than with a travel agent - at a fraction of the cost.  So no - I don't believe we do need travel agents anymore - so Byeee


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## Grizzly (30 Aug 2009)

There is an advert in yesterdays Irish Times for a cooking holiday in Tuscany. One of the selling points offered was "Free use of hotel swimming pool" and another "Free time for shopping including a *possible* visit to the beautiful city of Florence"

WoW!


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## undo (31 Aug 2009)

I do not think brokers are a uniquely Irish thing. They may be more common here as Ireland is still a remote backwater and is only trying to catch up with what has been the standard in Europe for a while in many ways. Travel agents and the like were the norm everywhere - and countries are moving away from them at different paces.


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## oldnick (31 Aug 2009)

Actually I agree with much of what "undo" writes (and surprisingly well for a techno nerd! Paragraphs and general syntax fine. Get an irish passport.).

I've said it before - bad/lazy travel agents should disappear. Clever ones can make a living without ripping off people -as long as the government stops adding taxes, fees,compulsary audits and high bonding and, soon VAT, to our business. 
A level-playing field with internet providers would be fairer.

_Anyway, why would people pay us for just booking a  flight ?_
Well, in comes a family or a couple wanting to get to ABC for a funeral, wedding, college interview (a lot recently) or (a hell of a lot recently) job interviews.
They don't have creidt cards -along with half the population. Or maybe,increasingly nowadays, they owe too much on their cards.
Assuming they have computers and know how to use the internet they may have seen a flight to ABC for ,say,70 or 180 or whatever euros each return.

Can we book it for them please ?

Well,a few points:-
1)  when it's two or more pax we may not book all of them together. Oten when we split the booking at least one person is at a cheaper fare. Sometimes three out of four of the group are at the cheaper fare and the last one at the dearer fare.

You already know how to do that . Most people don't.

It means a lot of seperate bookings which is a drag but it saves money.

2)In many cases people don't know about alternative airports. They'll ask to go to XYZ and the fare is crazy.But fifty miles is another airport where they can fly for much less and get the connecting train which we provide details of.

3)They may need one or a few nights in a local hotel. Nothing posh-often a B&B. We book a local cheapy that we know is O.K.  They often ask for bus and train details to get to their particular destinations. Besides all the usual questions that I often see on travel blogs aboyt luggage, pasports etc.

4)We also do the online check-in for Ryanair and will do for any other airline.

I charge 30 euros for one person and a decreasing scale for two or more,like 15 euros per person if there's four of them.
(Remember I may have saved them a lot by a couple of tricks like splitting the booking. Also I split the outbounds and returns to non-Euro destinations because of currency savings. That is, its sometimes cheaper to book the outbound in euro and the inbound in sterling,dollars etc.)

For those who get pleasure seeking deals on the intenet and like spending time saving money the the internet is great.Especially when they travel a lot,know the  nasty "traps" on airline websites.

For the many people this is not the case. Many people only go abroad once every year -or less.

Incredibly -to you - many people come in and like chatting , not only about their travel plans but about their kids, houses, the state of the economy or the price of beer. 
We get to know them and what they like. And we know that if we rip them off in this area we wouldn't last long.

However, as I said, with increasing govnt charges,fees and approaching VAT I know that i won't be around for ever.


P.S. On a small connected point....
This is what many travel agents find typical of some customers....
... a local businesman, big flash car, will order a fifty euro wine in restaurants.
Asks for a holiday to XYZ with various specifications. We find it and spend time  getting the info. We charge him 1.500 and give him all details.

Comes back and says his secretary (Mrs Undo ?) has looked up all the details and can get it 80 euros cheaper. Can we knock off 80 and he'll book with us.

It's not the 80 euro -especially for him. It's the fact someone else is making money,forgetting the fact he or his scretary has spent time and effort finding the details (or in this cAse we spent time and he expects us to do it for nowt).

Anyway, I've gained some more insight into anti-travel agent sentiment much of which is understandable -and rather than rail at the Gods I should attempt to keep this business open longer by providing better value and service.

Now, off to pretend to work this week.......


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## YoungCUB (2 Sep 2009)

Listen, no one is forcing you to use a Travel Agent.

If you have buckets of time to research and investigate all the various options and prices, good for you.

I could change the spark plugs on my car and probably do a half decent job servicing it, but I prefer using my leisure time for other pursuits ( similar to what OldNick used to do in the evenings!).

Same goes for maybe Gardening, Cleaning etc etc

Agents work on between 5 and 10% depending on the value of the booking. Not everyone wants to or can work to the schedules of Low Cost carriers ( you only get €30 fares on lousy days/lousy timings) and can hang around waiting for the next expedia $40 deal.


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