Which airlines allow you to hold a reservation for 24 hours without making payment? So far the few I have flown have required payment at the time of booking.
Regardless if it’s a hold or a payment you get it for a full 24 hours and can cancel it during that time frame. Not just 11:59pm on the day of booking.
All of them except low cost carriers. I’m guessing you always booked on their/a website? That’s why.
You either need a travel agent or to book over the phone to make a reservation without paying for it upfront.
Yes but you can’t have both. You can’t pay in full and be entitled to a refund within 24 hours because you CAN make a reservation without paying for it and have it held for 24 hours.
Actually it’s usually longer than 24 hours, it depends how far in advance you’re making the reservation and every airlines has their own rules.
OK here’s one to add to the pile.
I purchased a Japan Airlines ticket from their Taiwan website.
The purchase was in TWD, and the ticketing place was indicated on the ticket as Songshan, Taipei.
Yet when I received my credit card bill, I was dinged with international fees, as JAL had processed the ticket not in Taipei but in Tokyo.
I complained and argued with them about this, to no avail. Credit card fees are your responsibility, not ours, they stated.
Does this look legitimate to you? It did not sit right with me.
Guy
I can answer this one too! Your booking would have had the reservation made in JALs computer with PseudoCityCode in Taiwan, your ticket while issued in NTD was probably issued by their computer with a PseudoCityCode of Japan, (this part I’m guessing but it’s logical) JAL probably has a global merchant agreement with a bank in Japan that will process all currencies for them so it was probably issued in NTD but processed by a Japanese bank… so international credit card fees.
The real problem is that it is impossible to know if you will be hit with an international fee on your credit card before booking.
This is actually annoying for large countries like the US and Australia with several time zones in regards to the 11.59 rule. I was a travel agent in Victoria but my company’s head office was in Queensland… 6 months of the year Victoria and Queensland are in the same time zone and the other 6 months different because Victoria practices daylight savings time. I would make reservations under a Melbourne Pseudo City Code but tickets were issued under a Brisbane Pseudo City Code. So 6 months of the year I could void tickets until 10.59 and the other 6 months until 11.59.
The real head scratcher is that the majority of the ticket issuing team (usually they are issued robotically but sometimes need human intervention) was not even in Australia (but used a Brisbane Pseudo City Code) they’re in Indonesia. The Australian team only had like 2 people in it to deal with stuff the Indonesians couldn’t.
I worked in corporate travel so this technical knowledge is very necessary. Newbie agents selling weekends in Bali would have no idea.
The place a reservation was made is quite often not the same place as the ticket was issued.
I’m actually moving back to Australia to do this job again so it’s good to refresh my memory 
I did. That’s kind of interesting. Is there any benefit to using a travel agent than booking myself? Also would you say those farelock programs like some of the airlines offer for a fee are worth it?
They’re charging you for what travel agents and their call centre can do for free so not really.
Obviously I’m a bit biased because it’s my profession but generally speaking -
If you’re doing a simple one-way/return trip, booking with an airline directly is usually fine.
I would advise against using an online only travel agency though (basically anything through sky scanner that’s not airline direct)
If you want anything special such as round the world, multiple stops, 2 seats for 1 passenger (very overweight people need this), are travelling with more than 10 people, are prone to mistakes, are a frequent traveller (travelling more than say 3 times a month) have certain fare rules required, want to make a reservation without paying straight away, would like to book onto a sold out flight (it’s possible), booking tiny airlines, travelling to an obscure destination, would like to book more than 1 airline on your trip, are a business owner who travels or has staff who travel frequently, would like to travel in a premium cabin in one direction but economy in another direction (this is one of my favourite tricks and it makes flying business classs MUCH more affordable and realistic for most people) then a travel agent is probably a good idea.
A few constraints is that travel agents cannot redeem airline points for bookings and we are bound by the fare rules more strictly, airlines can break their own rules if they want but it would be rare for them to let a travel agent break their rules (unless you are a corporate client then they will usually give travel agents free reign to keep the company booking with that airline). You earn airline miles at the same rate as booking direct with an airline, it just depends on which fare you book onto.
But the key point is to find an experienced travel agent that you like, which is hard because people who have experience as travel agent almost never stay in retail (and no one likes everyone). It pays too little. Experienced agents usually move to a corporate agency or into travel wholesale work.
Also airlines pay really low commission (no commission in the US) so retail agents will probably either charge a booking fee, mark-up the fare (I’m not a fan of this practice) or ask you to book accomodation or something at the same time to make it worth their while. So it depends if the fee is worth it,
if you are booking a round the world trip even a fee of $18,000NTD would be worth it with a decent travel agent as One world and Star Alliance round the world fares are ridiculously over priced and any experienced travel agent should be able to find a reasonable alternative for about half the price of those fares.
Pricing gets a bit complicated and also depends on the country/agent/airline/travel agents company but generally speaking there should not be a significant price difference between booking directly on an airline’s website and booking with a travel agent
I do have a really great example of when travel agents can be really useful, even for small bookings, without you realising it.
Background info: Airlines do not allow 1 passenger to make multiple reservations on the same flight (as this means 1 person is holding multiple seats and the airline can’t sell the extra seats to other passengers). So all airlines have systems to auto detect duplicate bookings from ALL reservations made. So if John Smith decides to get quotes and have reservations made at 3 travel agents and the airline directly, all 4 of those reservations would be automatically deleted and John Smith will probably end up with a more expensive ticket when he eventually pays. If he had made one reservation with 1 agent or the airline directly, the price likely would not have changed.
A few years ago when I had just started in the travel scene, I had a Thai woman book a ticket from Melbourne - Bangkok. She paid. All was good. I got an error message in the booking about 4 months late saying “duplicate booking” which was confusing because the booking was so old I couldn’t imagine her going to get quote 4 months later. I called her anyway to double check and I was not surprised to hear that she hadn’t made any reservations elsewhere.
I called Thai airways and they said that it was definitely a duplicate booking, and I said well it’s definitely not because the passenger booked months ago. Thai advised to add in a frequent flyer number and passport details as point of difference between the 2 bookings. So that’s what I did. The only explanation is that someone with the exact same name as her booked onto the same flight.
I kept getting error messages, every day, for another 2 months or so. Eventually the reservation WAS AUTO DELETED by Thai Airways computer despite her ticket being valid and issued (remember tickets and reservations are not the same, they did not refund or cancel her ticket but simply deleted the reservation). The flight was now sold out. I had to waitlist the flight (a way to sell sold out flights) and get on the phone to Thai Airways every day for a week for them to approve the waitlist and re-attach the reservation to her ticket. they also wouldn’t guarantee this wouldn’t happen again as it’s computer automated. So I had to watch her booking every day until she was on the plane to Thailand and again on the way back to Melbourne. - My customer was unaware of this entire process and she boarded her flight with no problems. All this for like $20aud of commission
The passenger with the same name who also booked onto that flight may not have been so lucky.
It’s worth noting that airlines normally won’t auto-delete a reservation when a ticket has already been issued so I have no idea why Thai Airways does.
I also was the reason Lufthansa Group changed their fare rules globally to be able to re-book onto their other brands flights in the event of cancellation, I’m quite proud of that. I didn’t get any credit for it though, they just sent out an email globally advising an update to their rules and it was exactly what I had made them do for my client that they made a blanket rule.
You are wrong. I had it refunded 23 hours later, its USA rules.
https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/reservations/refunds/24-hour-booking-policy.html
That is an airline fare rule, not a blanket policy or legal requirement. Fair rules vary within one airline, vary between airlines and vary between countries.
United has probably just done this to save themselves headaches while also ripping off its customers with ‘farelock’ fees.
The USA legal rules are as I described above.
Wrong again, policy from DOT (USA gov) allow a reservation to be cancelled within 24 hours without penalty (the “24-hour reservation requirement”).
allow a reservation to be cancelled within 24 hours without penalty (the “24-hour reservation requirement”).
Reservation and ticket are not the same thing. Read above.
They are required to
Give you a free option to hold/cancel a reservation for 24 hours
Or
Refund a ticket within 24 hours of purchase.
They do not have to offer both. All airlines excluding low cost carriers offer the first option in some form.
United have just streamlined their fare rules to encourage people to book and pay upfront on their website without advertising there is a free option available that does not require upfront payment.
P.S. I’d really appreciate it if you stopped saying I’m wrong then providing information that proves me correct… I’m happy to be wrong… but you’re providing links that show I’m correct.
Great posts! You sir are an asset to this community.
Guy
No worries 
the 11.59 ticket voiding rule on the day of issue is global too (there are exceptions, notably low cost airlines and really small airlines)
So if you ever find you make an error, call the airline/travel agent and ask them to void the ticket straight away (ensure you say void and not cancel/refund). There is not even 1 minute of flexibility with this so if you mess up, act fast once it hits midnight, that’s it, you pay fees to make changes/corrections
BTW I probably should have mentioned that this is left over from the time of paper tickets. It has been kept because it works well for frequent travellers, travel agents, corporate travellers.
Actually making a reservation has not really changed at all since the time of paper tickets. When the internet boomed the reservation systems were updated to be able to issue tickets as well. And airlines and travel agents just threw pretty websites on top.
You can look up SABRE and Amadeus, these are the most popular systems that airlines and travel agents use. They work on a command line like MS-DOS