Why confirm airline reservations?

Factual Questions
1

Various airline and travel websites tell you that you should call the airline to confirm your reservations, usually one day before departure for domestic flights, and two or three days for international flights. I’ve done a fair amount of flying in the last few years, and have never called to confirm a reservation. Why do they tell you to do so? The only explanations I can come up with end up not making any sense.

First, maybe you should confirm the reservation so that the airline doesn’t give your seat to someone else. Well, if I show up at the airport within the prescribed time before the flight, and I’ve got a ticket in my hot little hand (or at least a printout confirming an e-ticket purchase), I’m getting on that flight. If the airline overbooked the flight (which they always do), it’s their problem to work out, not mine. Besides that, do they not overbook if you call to confirm your reservation? I’ll bet not.

Second, maybe you should confirm the reservation so that, if you’re late getting to the airport, they won’t give your seat away to someone else at the last minute. This would be analogous to guaranteeing a hotel reservation with a credit card: even if you show up at 1:00 am, they’ll still be holding a room for you (at least theoretically!). As I understand it, however, if you don’t get to the airport in time, and try to show up at the gate 30 seconds before departure time, you’re almost certainly going to be out of luck, whether you’ve confirmed your reservation or not.

Third, maybe you should confirm the reservation just to make sure that they haven’t lost your reservation. I’ve never had this happen to me, nor do I know anyone to whom it has ever happened. Again, as long as I’ve got a ticket, if the airline’s reservation system has lost me, that’s their problem, not mine. Besides that, I have trouble believing that finding out about a “lost” reservation one day before departure, as opposed to two hours before departure, is going to significantly reduce whatever problems that loss has created.

As far as I can tell, calling an airline to confirm a reservation just generates a load on their 800 number, and doesn’t produce any benefit either to the airline or to the traveler.

Is there anyone out there in the airline or travel business who can enlighten me? What does an airline do or not do, depending upon whether you call to confirm your reservation?

2

I do not think it is required for you to do it and I do not do it except if it is a ticket I reserved months in advance as I want to make sure they did not forget about me. They usually ask for a phone number where you can be reached in case of any changes and this has proven useful to me a couple of times. They called once and said the flight from Europe had been cancelled and, obviously, the return flight to Europe I was supposed to take would not be happening.

But I do not think they can use your not reconfirming as a valid excuse to deny you anything so long as you meet all other consitions.

3

I hadn’t thought about the “change notification” angle, sailor, but I guess that is worth something to the traveler. I’ve found that, buying tickets on the 'net, I routinely get emails informing me of schedule changes (when you buy a few months in advance, those are damn near guaranteed!).

Now, if I can just count on United getting me to Miami in January, so I can make my connecting flight to Roatan, I’ll be a happy boy!

4

Isn’t this the result of over-selling?? They know that (say) 15% of people who book airplane tickets will not actually turn up, so they sell 15% extra tickets. Asking you to confirm gives them a better idea (closer to the time) of the actual number of passengers so they can get ready to sell more or move people to a different flight. If a plane was overbooked and you did turn up without confirming, I think they could well turn you away…

Grim

5

I guess that’s at least partly true, grimpixie, but your last statement just ain’t right. If you show up within the allotted time with a ticket, they can’t turn you away, confirmation or no. If they’ve seriously overbooked, they ask for volunteers who are willing to get bumped, in exchange for cash or future free tickets or discounts. I suppose it does help them figure out how much they can get away with overbooking, though.

6

They can turn you away. I’ve seen it done. If you read the ticket, you’ll see in tiny tiny print that your ticket does not guarantee you your booked (and confirmed) flight, just a flight which can be at any time and even on another airline. If they’ve sold 350 tickets for a 300 seat flight and don’t get 50 voulnteers to go on a later flight, then some people are going to get stranded (and very :mad: )

7

Another reason for “confirming” might be that the schedules often change, and if the airline “couldn’t” contact you about the change, this is an added way to find out about it. Even a change of only 15 minutes could cause you to miss a flight.

8

My wife returned this morning after a nightmare round-trip to Boston via London (moderator please advise, can I mention the airline name and details of the f**k-ups … I’d dearly love to!)

Learn from our mistakes.

If your trip involves more than one airline - CONFIRM
If you have ordered any special meals - CONFIRM
If you need any sort of assistence - CONFIRM
If you are laying-over for more than 2 hours at an intermediate airport - CONFIRM
If you have to change terminals - CONFIRM
If you have booked through an agent - CONFIRM

Not that CONFIRMING will guarantee anything, but it may give you better grounds to complain (?sue?).

9

I saw two sets of people turned away during my travel this Thanksgiving. They had tickets. The airline refused to board them, compensate them, or ask for volunteers to bump. In one instance, I heard the airline rep say, “Not, it’s not our problem, even if you do have a ticket.” Happy holidays!

10

Addendum: My bookings disappear because I have an easily-misspelled surname. I’d say there’s a problem about 10% of the time (not just with airlines, but with utilities, orders, etc.), so I always confirm.

11

I’m a frequent flyer, doing about 50,000 miles a year. I never confirm and I’ve never had a problem. I suspect they ask you to do it more for their convenience.

12

…and frequent fliers are the last people airlines will bump.

13

(Emphasis mine.)

Source: http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/publications/defensive.htm
<hijack=on>

Source: http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/publications/flyrights.htm

I suggest you read the entire section on overbooking. There are rules you must follow in order to entitled to be compensated, as well as areas where if bumped, you will receive no compensation.
<hijack=off>

14

It makes sense to check that the flight is on schedule, but that’s not the same as reconfirming your reservation, though. I always check the flight time on the Internet before leaving home in case there is a delay.

15

This may be one of those things that happens elsewhere more often than it happens in the U.S.

I remember an incident about thirty years ago when my wife and I went on vacation carribean (I 've long since forgotten exactly where), and when we showed up at the airport to fly back home we were told that our tickets had been cancelled because we hadn’t called up several days ahead to confirm our reservation.

Fortunately for us, the flight wasn’t fully booked and the airline “let” us get on the plane and fly home.

16

Uhh, that was supposed to be “my wife and I went on a vacation to a Carribean island”. Sorry about that.

17

Always, always, always confirm!!

I do a good bit of flying and I’ve shown up at airports, ticket in hand, and been told that I wasn’t in the system.

“But I’m holding a frikin ticket!” I say.
“Well that doesn’t matter,” replys the helpful checkin in person. “We don’t have your name in the computer so you ain’t getting on the plane.”
“I see. So the fact that I have an actual fking plane ticket in my fcking hand with my fking name and this fking flight number on it doesn’t mean a thing?”
“No. And if you’d like, I can call a Garda to elaborate.”
“Er, no thanks, I’ll figure it out on my own.”

Well, a few phone calls later it turns out that there was a computer glitch between the agency I booked with and the airline’s system. A complicating factor is that the agency, not the airline, issues the tickets. Though everything was a-ok with the agency, they never thought to tell the airline that I was on that flight. In this scenario arguing with the airline was pretty useless. Not only do they have no record of the booking, they’ve also not received any payment for the flight from the agency.

As I was a bit pissed when this whole thing happened I did a bit more digging to find out why the agency might have blown it. As it turns the less scrupulous agencies buy all the bargin seats in advance. They then sell them to the consumer, with a big 'ol mark up, a few months in advance. The agent issues a ticket and makes a reservation with the airline but does not pay up for the flight. The agent doesn’t have to do that until some 21 days before departure. In the meantime, they hold on to you’re money, using it to cover thier bets at the local bookmaker. If they lose, you lose.

[Stienfeld soup nazi] No flight for you![/Stienfeld soup nazi]

Given, this would be less likely to happen if one books directly through the airline however, one random typo can leave you flying into Madagascar as opposed to Madrid. Why call a few days in advance to confirm? Well, trying to get a flight fixed at 05:00 on a Sunday is a right pain in the ass, and in could in fact take a few days.

18

Well it sounds like the opinion of a fair number of the Teeming Millions™ is that calling to confirm can’t hurt, and it might help. On top of that, check in early! (I always do, anyway. And never, ever, go to the airport without some reading material - you never know how long you’re going to be hanging around.) And watch out for agents who may not follow through.

Making the confirmation calls is painless enough, of course, so there’s no reason not to, I guess. Thanks all.

(Oh, and rampisad, you can certainly name names, but the best place to do it might be in a Pit thread - over there, you can even spell out “f**king airline,” and any other choice epithets you’d care to use. Fun, and therapeutic, to boot.)

19

Last February I flew Air Canada Montreal-Barbados. We got there about 1 3/4 hours before scheduled departure and got our seat assignments and everything was fine–with us. But the flight was badly overbooked and people who got there an hour before were put on standby. I have no idea when they cut it off, but there was one couple who called to confirm the day before (which we hadn’t) and was told that all was in order and were on standby. They were hopping mad. When they inquired how it was decided who got seats, they were told it was according to how much they had paid for their tickets. (I should say that our tickets were about $450 Canadian a piece RT, which is probably about as cheap as it got; we had bought them 6 months in advance.) People on standby who did get seated got first class seats. People who didn’t got vouchers for any flight in north America and, if from out of town, hotel vouchers till the next day when they could fly to Toronto and take a flight from there. (There is just flight a week from Montreal, but daily flights from Toronto.) Plus they got their fare refunded. We are going again in February and will probably get there 2 hours in advance. Anyway, two weeks of sun, sand, and surf is wondrous thing in the middle of a Montreal winter. :):slight_smile:

20

I’ve flown internationally with Air Canada and Qantas in the past 3 months and each airline has said on their telephone out-going message that they DON’T want you to re-confirm. Because I wanted to check that my flight home from Oz [booked 5 months before that] WAS still scheduled, I spent an hour and 10 minutes over 3 tries in 13 hours . . . and didn’t connect to a live person. So you might not be ABLE to confirm, even if you want to. [Out of curiousity about the results, I then called Virgin Blue, Oz’s cheap upstart airline, and got through to a live person on the second ring.]