Airline policies suck!

Even at 70 years of age, life still throws up new discoveries that bewilder me.

My latest ‘horrible’ experience has been with Rex Airlines. What I have just discovered about how the airline business generally operates astounds me, in fact, based on my latest experience, I’d go so far to say that what they do borders on the highly questionable to say the least. Here’s my story.

I haven’t flown for many, many years so I have virtually no experience with modern day airlines. I recently had to arrange an important meeting in Sydney and on my wife’s prompting, decided not to drive down and back in the same day, but spend the money and fly. I was aware of a $99 ticket deal that was arranged with Rex Airlines a while back but fully realised, such seats were probably a bit of a lottery.

I therefore rocked into a local travel agent to book flights for a week later. $760 later I walked out with my tickets believing that I’d probably paid top dollar, but such is life, I thought. While there I was advised to take later flights because Rex Airlines didn’t have a wonderful record with running on time. That’s helpful too, isn’t it.

The day before I was due to fly, my appointment got cancelled and that’s when I started to discover what’s wrong with airline policies, and my view of how they operate just went downhill completely.

I therefore had to cancel my flights and was prepared to pay a penalty of some sort, that turned out to be $100. I was told also that one of the flights was a no cancellation ticket, something the travel agent later claimed they told me, but I do not recall that at all. The upshot of this was they issued me with a credit for the remaining amount ($660) and said I could use it anytime within 6 months. As mentioned, I have absolutely no use for the tickets, but felt I could use the credit for someone else. I attempted to do that last week and was told, I was the only one who could use the credit. Marvellous!

I have since asked the Travel agent to give Rex an ultimatum on my behalf and at the time of writing I am still waiting for their reply. In the meantime, I have had a look at the Rex website to see how their fares work and I’m horrified. Rex offers five fare options between Orange and Sydney and the prices vary greatly. Try and explain how this can possibly be reasonable in anyone’s language. The same 60 minutes or so flight can cost anything from $108.05 to $478.75 depending on which seat you sit in. Rex Promo - $108.05, Rex Net - $165.25, Rex Saver - $203.75, Rex Biz - $423.75 and Rex Flex - $478.75. And now having read that, I have absolutely no idea why my tickets cost me $380 each in the first place, a price that appears to be in no man’s land.

In this day and age, how can any business be allowed to operate on this basis and treat people this way?