Hello everybody! 🙂
I’ve booked a holiday to the Maldives with Thomas Cook, the flight is provided by Monarch. At the time of booking we were told there were no premium seats left. I’ve recently been on Monarchs website and found they have premium seats for our flights.
I phoned Thomas Cook and they said they can’t upgrade me as they have no allocated premium seats left. Monarch won’t give them any.
I phone Monarch and they say they can’t upgrade me I have to talk to my tour operator!!!
I find the whole thing crazy, there are empty seats on a plane I’m willing to pay for and no one will sell them to me.
Does any one have experience of this and know any way round it?!
Thanks
Richard
By: Skymonster - 12th March 2009 at 17:14
There are a number of reasons for this – typically this sort of thing happens:
1. Monarch sells seats in bulk to Thomas Cook at a lower rate than the airline sells seats direct to the public. Monarch believes that they can sell the remaining premium seats directly for more money than they can get by selling/allocating more premium to Thomas Cook
2. Thomas Cook will have bought seats in bulk from Monarch – these seats become Thomas Cook’s to sell, and it is Thomas Cook’s risk if they do not sell all their allocation. If Monarch upgraded you, your standard seats would have to be released and sold again – in fact, Thomas Cook would have to sell them again (at their risk) as those seats are in Thomas Cook’s allocation. For this reason, operators like Thomas Cook do not want the airline to sell upgrades direct to Thomas Cook’s customers – it messes up Thomas Cook’s seat inventory sales. So the agreement between airline and tour operator is typically one where each does not usually interfere with the other’s sales
3. Monarch do not necessarily know what price Thomas Cook charged you for the standard seats (as within reason having bought seats in bulk from Monarch at a discount, Thomas Cook will be free to set their own pricing), so Monarch will be unable to work out what to charge you for the upgrade
The mistake you made was buying standard seats from Thomas Cook BEFORE you checked whether premium seats were available direct from Monarch. If you had done that first, you may have stood more change of arranging something, either by buying direct from Monarch or discussing your requirements with Thomas Cook before buying, explaining that you were aware that premium seats were still available direct, and basically refusing to buy from Thomas Cook unless they obtained premium seats for you. Now you’ve booked, the entire thing becomes too difficult!
Andy
By: rjfisher - 12th March 2009 at 16:42
I can understand that Thomas Cook have sold their allocation, I don’t understand why Monarch won’t take my money and let me upgrade? They were happy to take my money for extra leg room seats in economy. The premium seats are available flight only from their own website so I can’t understand why they wont sell them to me direct!
By: OneLeft - 12th March 2009 at 15:38
Thinking back to my charter days, I’m guessing (and it is a guess) that monarch have sold a given number of premium seats to each of the tour operators using the flight, and that Thomas Cook have sold all of theirs whilst other tour operators haven’t.
The only way round that would be to cancel with Thomas Cook (assuming you can) and rebook with another company that still has availability (assuming they can offer the holiday you want).
1L.
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March 12, 2009 at 11:57 am