Save Thirteen Euros

[Roland Perry]

BMIBaby check-in at AMS this morning opened a little late, although
there were plenty of staff at the desks. They were in a huddle.

I suspect they were hand-copying lists (I saw one later) of pax who
needed special treatment - perhaps failed to give advance notice of
their passport details. I can't think what else it would have been (the
note said Euro 13, so that's the equivalent of two sets of �5.

"Please note if this information has not been provided in full
prior to arriving at the airport, there will be a charge of �5
per passenger per sector for bmibaby to administer this at the
airport. You will have to go to a check in desk to provide this
information. APIS data cannot be taken at the departure gate.
This charge is non-refundable. The request for the advance
passenger information is a direct requirement from the UK
Government and we apologise for any inconvenience this may
cause."

So remember to fill it in before you leave home.
--
Roland Perry

[Neil Williams]

On Sep 5, 11:19 am, Roland Perry <rol...@perry.co.uk> wrote:

> So remember to fill it in before you leave home.

Why aren't the airlines changing their booking engines to make it
required at the time of booking or online check-in, one wonders?

It's not as if the requirement, unsavoury though it is, took anyone by
surprise.

Neil

[Roland Perry]

In message
<b91c176e-5699-476e...@o10g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>, at
01:54:06 on Mon, 7 Sep 2009, Neil Williams <pace...@gmail.com>
remarked:

>> So remember to fill it in before you leave home.
>
>Why aren't the airlines changing their booking engines to make it
>required at the time of booking or online check-in, one wonders?

I booked some more Easyjet flights, and they now have something on their
booking confirmation [1] that pleads with you to log back in and
complete the data right away. And *drum roll* they remember the data
from last time you flew!

But this kinda makes it even stranger they don't at least offer the
option of doing it while you are booking. I understand that people often
book low-cost flights online for friends/family and may not have the
passports immediately to hand, but if you are booking just one ticket
for yourself, makes sense to integrate it.

>It's not as if the requirement, unsavoury though it is, took anyone by
>surprise.

But it always does. And the Spanish have been requiring it for a couple
of years (post-Madrid reaction) so they've had lots of time to test it
on a subset of the pax.

[1] Which is severely broken in Firefox.
--
Roland Perry