Travel is Not Meant to Run on a Script

Only Humans can truly move humans.

If only my traveller could have had this view.

A few nights ago, one of my clients stood at a check-in counter in Santo Domingo with a valid, paid, fully issued ticket, and a computer that said no.

Not because he had done anything wrong, or due to a lack of seats, or even because the ticket was incorrect. He was denied boarding because two airline systems could not communicate with each other. Somewhere in the handshake between a marketing carrier and an operating carrier, an IATA number restriction had quietly switched a real person’s real journey off.

He was stranded for two nights. As his travel professional, I was too, in every way that matters. On the phone from home at 01h30 in the morning, while he stood at a counter in another country, on the other side of the world, he was watching a boarding agent stare at a screen that had nothing more to offer either of us. Nobody was able to pick up a phone and correct a system glitch. Two airlines were unable to speak to each other over a phone call.