I have just booked a short flight for two with a major airline.  I reached the end of my booking to discover that a flight that I had thought was going to cost £139.00 was now in fact close to £250!  I was at the point of ‘click n’ go’ – when I discovered that this cheap flight was £111 extra! 

Why?  I decided to investigate!  I clicked back through my booking and discovered that there was a charge for the seats I had chosen.  No surprise there you say and indeed I would expect in this ‘new’ commercial reality to pay for such extras!  However, when I was making the booking I could not see that there was any charge applicable – so I booked my seat!  On further investigation, I discovered below the seat map, a coloured section which detailed my seat choice and in small writing, in the same colour family as the box in question, was the information that booking a standard seat was £6 and an extra leg room seat was £15 – both charged each way if you choose to book seats! 

1/10 for design – what about those with sight difficulties or those who are not savvy in their navigation of websites?

Throughout the booking process I also noticed that my total was being added up in a side panel, again no problem.  There was information about an administration fee with a hyperlink.  I examined the hyperlink and found that this related to the charge to be applied according to which credit/debit/charge card you used, again no problem.

After I had adjusted my booking I proceeded to payment, lo and behold, there was an extra charge – an administration fee!  This was an additional administration fee on top of the credit/debit card charge!  Where did that come from?  I looked through the panels of information and could find no reference to it, what on earth was I paying for? 

1/10 for design and lack of information!  Is this really fair to the Consumer? 

If the airline industry are confident that they offer a good product, why can’t they just make it clear what you have got to pay for any why?

If you think that we have it bad, have a look at this US article on airline charges!

If you think I am the only one concerned about this, have a look at this article from TravelMole and note the comments from members of the travel industy.

Isn’t about time that Trading Standards/OFT acted against such practices and use the full force of The Unfair Trading Regulations?

We hope that you have enjoyed this flight and we look forward to seeing you again….

Tags: Hidden Flight Charges

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Airline Complaints, The Crows Nest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.