Travelocity.com False Advertising No Accountability San Antonio Texas

I felt I needed to point out just a few things regarding this report. I am a former travel industry employee and I can shed some insight on things.

Airlines, in order to be displayed on Travelocity, must be approved by the Airline Reporting Commission and the Sabre travel system. They have to submit schedules and pricing structures. If the airline folds, these bodies are responsible for removing the airline from their systems. If they do not, and if they do not send an alert to travel agencies that an airline is no longer in existence, an agency has no way to know that an airline does not exist until something like your situation occurs.

You blame Travelocity for the schedule change that delayed you, but the schedule changes are not made by Travelocity. They do not fly the planes (or not fly, in this case), they do not set the schedules. These come from the airline - so this airline has to exist in some form or another, even if they are not flying.

Refunds, too, do not come from Travelocity or any other travel agency. When your money is received, it is directed - minus a small commission - through the Airline Reporting Commission and then to the airline. Therefore, when Travelocity "gives" you a refund, what they are really doing is getting the money back for you from the airline.

So Travelocity has done what it is obligated to do - in the discovery of finding an airline is basically only an airline on paper, they retrieved your funds from the airline and returned them to you. Your further demands that Travelocity use their funds to pay for a free ticket on another airline - because the first airline delayed schedules on nonexistent flights - are not an obligation.

A travel agent of any kind, be it brick-and-mortar (as in, the sort you walk into and speak with a person face to face to negotiate a travel transaction) or internet, is a third party between you and the airlines to obtain travel services. Unless indicated otherwise, anything presented to you is provided by the airlines, not by your travel agent. Your funds are given to the airlines, not your travel agent (again, sans commission, which some airlines don't even pay nowadays).

What you are asking for, this free ticket, is over and beyond what Travelocity or any travel agent would be required to do for you under these circumstances. If you really wanted your plane ticket as a fund raising donation, you would have asked for it in the beginning instead of buying it. What are are doing is asking a third party to be culpable and compensate you for another company's severe mistake, and while I understand your frustration and the situation you are in, you are not in the right. You have received (or have been assured to receive) exactly what you are entitled to receive from Travelocity, and nothing more is required. It may seem harsh, and certainly it is not what you want to hear, but most consumer advocates will tell you the same thing; I have seen it done many times.

Most consumers are not aware of the mechanics of selling airline tickets, and think that travel agencies automatically see in their system that an airline doesn't exist, that agencies deliberately sell bad tickets and mess with the schedules. This is not the case. Travelocity - and other agencies - sell a product that is manufactured by another, unrelated company.

I see I nearly left out one thing - the airline is still being displayed on the website.

Travelocity's website states that it is powered by Sabre. Sabre is the travel booking system that they use - and everything on the website is pulled directly from Sabre and automatically loaded. Until the airline is pulled from Sabre (which would be handled through Sabre, who, though they are Travelocity's parent company are still a separate corporation and so this is still not a Travelocity issue), it will still display on the website. The website is fed directly from Sabre.

I hope this clears things up. I know it doesn't get you the free ticket you wanted, but I think it is important that consumers understand the mechanics of their ticket purchases, so they can see where the real problems lie.