Today i went to the travel agent that sell me the ticket to go to Jakarta to re-issued my ticket again, since i had canceled my ticket since my father was ill and i still have 1 month to re-issued it again before it expired. When i canceled this flight, i was told that i can re-issued it again but i have to pay Rp. 50.000. Today, i had to pay more than that, since the there are no available seats that have the same class as mine, so i have to upgrade my tickets to higher class in order to get the available seats and that means i had to pay more.
The problem is not about the money, but about the services. Some airways use classes to differentiate the price between their tickets, but at the end, nothing is different. You get the same snack (only several airways give snack on the plane), drink, tight seats, and services. So, what's the advantage of paying higher classes if we (the customer) don't get any additional services?
The tickets had been confirmed and i will leave to Jakarta on Sunday at 6 PM. Hopefully there won't be any bad weather.
Of course you have many advantages from business or first class, included:
ReplyDelete- Faster check in at the airport
- Lounge facilities at the airport
- Better food inflight
- Wider and bigger seat
- Also, better service and nicer looking stewardess :)
- Faster check in at the airport --> not really as far as i experience
ReplyDelete- Lounge facilities at the airport --> only applied in some airways
- Better food inflight --> in most cases, NO
- Wider and bigger seat --> in most cases, NO
- Also, better service and nicer looking stewardess --> no comment on this one
your chance of survival in the event of a plane crash would be higher if you take first class:
ReplyDeleteAs for the seats, the flight attendant seat safest, followed by first class, then economy.
You should check the terms and conditions of your ticket before writing this blog. There you can see that the cheapest economy ticket, the V class has a lot of restriction. For example, booking expiry date is 7 days (which means once you make booking you only have few days to pay at, after that it is automatically canceled. It is also non refundable so if you cancel your trip your money is lost. Also if you are late for check in, you are goner. Or if you come too early, you cannot take earlier flight. May be also you cannot clock your frequent flier miles. Or just in case the airlines decide to cancel the trip you can only get your money back, but they will not book you into another airliner flight (non-endorsable). You will also have lower priority if there is high-priority passenger coming in and need to offload previous check-in passenger.
ReplyDeleteFor my business trip, although I may be flying economy, I am paying the full fare class, the Y class. With Y class I can get :
a. clocking frequent flier mileage, so I am now Gold class. Although flying economy I can use the Business/First class lounge at the airport. I can also enter the plane anytime I want, no need to queue with other economy passenger. I can have the separate check in queue also which is faster.
b. Just in case I am late check in, I will be re-booked to next flight without being fined
c. Just in case I come too early, I can just take the earlier flight without needing to compensate
d. Just in case the airline cannot fly, or cancel the flight, I can use my ticket to another airline (endorsable)
d. I can cancel my trip 2 hours before departure, just in case I need to do something first, and keep the booking open for 1 year
e. I can change the schedule anytime I want, even going forward
f. The booking grace period also longer, I can hold the booking and may be thinking whether I will buy the ticket or not for 1 month, useful if I am not too sure when I need to fly
now you can see, that although Y and V class are the same economy class passenger on the actual flight, the service rendered during booking and ground service are different.
And there are many class in between the Y and V. Some LCC airlines can have about 10 different classes for the economy only.
I'm talking about local Indonesian airways (i'm not going to specify which airways), not international airways.
ReplyDeleteJust for information
After browsing the airways' site, i found some information about the expiration date of the tickets and anonymous was right. There are difference. I also found some difference about the free luggage for business and economy.
ReplyDeletein case of your Y class, i don't think it's happening on the airways i'm using :D
Just want to make the statement more correct with proof, we can try booking the flight from Jakarta (CGK) to Yogyakarta (JOG), using *domestic* airlines that has online reservation, for example :
ReplyDeletea. www.garuda-indonesia.com
b. www.lionair.co.id
c. www.flyadamair.com (psstt... please buy additional insurance :P)
Unfortunately the most sophisticated one, Air Asia www.aiarasia.com does not fly to JOG, where Willy loves to go :P
Sample from Lion Air. for the economy class they will give :
Y 619000
D 609000
W 569000
I 559000
S 519000
B 479000
H 439000
K 399000
L 359000
M 329000
N 302300
Q 269000
T 239000
V 189000
See? 14 different classes of Economy only, and there are still differences if the plane turns out operated by Wings Air (MD 82) instead of Lion Air (MD90 or B737-200).
Same thing for Garuda, they vary as follow:
ECONOMY NORMALRp. 1.064.000,00
ECON. FREQUENT FLYER GUARANTEE Rp. 1.064.000,00
ECONOMY MODERATE Rp. 1.004.000,00
ECONOMY BUDGET Rp. 937.000,00
ECONOMY PROMO ONE Rp. 857.000,00
ECONOMY PROMO TWO Rp. 757.000,00
About the Y class, I am a frequent user of Garuda Indonesia and Lion Air/Wings between Jakarta (CGK) and Bali (DPS). Sometimes the Y class price, combined with the privilege from Citibank and BII Gold/Platinum credit card can really give a treat. And I had few occasion where I exercised my right of changing the date or time of flying and getting some leeway of the excess baggage. When you travel with a baby you will see the difference ;-D
The lesson learned is that when you want to book a flight, really study the pricing you get, and match that with your planned itinerary. Push the travel agent to do exhaustive research for you. If you go abroad for international flight and using international travel agent, sometimes the pricing scheme even more interesting like bidding the seat, or just mention the maximum price you want to pay but leave the date open based on the offer etc.
Thanks for the clarification. I think i will have to read more in the airways site :D
ReplyDeleteI hope this information is useful to other people also