Without a travel agent, you're on your own

In contrast to the old days when virtually all trips required the expertise and resources of a competent travel agent, today anyone with a credit card and access to telephones, e-mail and the Internet can arrange for just about any journey imaginable, from the simplest round-trip jaunts to complex, months-long, globe girdling odysseys. You can research destinations, book flights and hotels and reserve rental cars, cruises, package tours and all the other elements that go into a trip.

At the same time, this freedom has revealed another dark truth: Never has it been easier get things royally screwed up.

With the complexities of knowledgeably picking places and dates, booking accommodations and activities and coordinating reservations for often complicated flight and travel arrangements, there's significant potential for misadventures.

Even when you plan everything correctly, Murphy's Law is still in force. As Jean Thomas recently discovered, sometimes strange things happen. Although modern developments such as electronic communications, airline interline agreements and code-sharing are intended to simplify and streamline travel operations, they also create many cracks through which your trip might fall.

Thomas recently contacted me regarding a problem that had cropped up around a trip to Corsica she and her husband, Clarke, both experienced world travelers, plan to take this month.

In late March, she had called Air France and booked and paid more than $2,500 for two round-trip flights from Pittsburgh to Corsica. Their itinerary involves a Delta flight to New York's Kennedy International Airport (actually operated by Comair, this happens to be Pittsburgh's only daily nonstop flight to JFK). There the Thomases were scheduled to board a nonstop Air France flight to Nice and connect the next morning with a short Air France flight to Corsica.

Everything seemed fine until several weeks ago, when Thomas realized that their airline tickets didn't have any seats assigned. So she called Air France and got seats for the flights from New York and Nice but was told she had to check with Delta for the flights from Pittsburgh.

Unfortunately, when she called Delta, she was informed that her flight reservations had been canceled and seats were no longer available.

That news, as you might imagine, was received with some consternation.

When Thomas inquired who had canceled their booking, she was informed Delta's computer record showed it had been done by Air France, and since the tickets had been issued by Air France, it was up to them to correct the problem.

According to Air France's computers, however, the Thomases' booking was in place and there was no problem. All they had to do was go to the airport.

Both airlines, incidentally, are members of the SkyTeam Alliance, a group of six carriers that have banded together in a cooperative arrangement to provide passengers with simplified, streamlined services. Apparently, however, that cooperative agreement doesn't extend to actually talking with each other.

After a volley of frustrating e-mails and telephone calls back and forth between the two carriers, with each insisting its computers were correct, Thomas had no resolution to her situation and no one willing to help solve the bureaucratic snafu in which she found herself. So, "beginning to feel like Alice in Wonderland," she contacted me.

While travel editors personally have far less influence with airlines and hotels than readers often assume, we do sometimes have an idea of who can help. I called Paul Busang, owner of Gulliver's Travels, a well-established travel agency in the East End. Apart from his company's reputation, I knew that Busang had once worked for Air France, and I suspected that he might have some inside contacts.

It was a good guess. The next day, Busang called to report the Thomases' situation had been satisfactorily resolved. They now had seats for all their flights.

Apparently, a brief electrical anomaly in the Air France computers had caused the cancellation of a batch of reservations. Although the mistake had been quickly caught and the reservations reinstated in the Air France system, somehow the news had not been relayed to the Delta computer system.

Technically, therefore, reservation agents from both airlines had been correct when talking with Thomas, although that wouldn't have helped her one bit had she and her husband simply showed up at the airport in Pittsburgh expecting to get on their Delta flight.

According to Busang, failing to get seat assignments is one of the most common mistakes made by people who book their own flights. In the logic of airline computer systems, most reservations aren't complete unless a seat has been allocated out of the inventory on the specific flights involved. So, when making reservations, remember to get seat assignments before you hang up or log off. (Remember, however, that some discount carriers, such as Southwest, don't make any advance seat assignments, and that seats for some of the lowest fares on other carriers are assigned only at the airport.)

Thomas also learned another good travel lesson. Even though it's possible to "do it yourself," sometimes it makes good sense to pay a little for professional help.

Like most travel agencies since the airlines stopped paying commissions, Gulliver's charges a fee for each airline ticket it issues ($35 in Gulliver's case).

While that may seem an unnecessary expense when you're booking a simple flight, it can ensure that the details of a complex itinerary will be in order before you leave home, and it can provide a knowledgeable professional to contact if some element of the trip does not go as planned.

Otherwise, as the marketing slogan of the American Society of Travel Agents notes: "Without a travel agent you're on your own."