18A

Is this my lucky number? Hmm...definitely not....actually a bit frustrated by this number. The story of 18A began like this...

Last night we had family dinner. After the dinner, my auntie asked me to help her to check the airlines website since she can't access it. When I checked the website, still got plenty seats and even got zero fare. So I informed her about that and then she asked me to book the air ticket for my cousin. Ok...so I booked the ticket, need to book two trips (X to Y and Y to Z). The first booking was successfully done. However the second booking encountered some problems....I managed to get the zero fare and I even pre-selected the seat -> 18A. The payment procedure failed and some error messages displayed..."similar booking done before...please call our customer service centre to resolve the problem in order to avoid duplicate booking". Similar booking?? maybe the passenger's name is the same, but with different destination. So I called the customer service centre....engaged....wait for a few minutes....still engaged. I decided to call back after half an hour.

I called again...this time successfully contact the customer service staff...and she told me that the first booking was confirmed; the second booking not yet confirmed, need to book again. When I access the website again, no more zero fare...I need to pay RM109 for the flight. My goodness, within half an hour, I need to pay more...and the funny thing was that 18A (the seat that I chose before) was booked by other. Why I think it was funny...because there were more than 90 empty seats available and coincidentally someone booked the same seat. I called the customer service centre again to double confirm about the availability of zero fare...and the reply was "no more". I even asked the staff whether I can change the date of first trip...the reply was "No changes are allowed because the fare type is Super Saver. You can only forfeit your air ticket". No choice...I booked another seat with extra payment of RM109.

This morning I checked the airlines website again...quite free since today was holiday. To my astonishment, the zero fare is available again. ??? what's wrong??? Zero fare was sold out last night but available again this morning... am I dreaming?? I called the customer service centre again :D ...the staff told me that there was one more seat left for zero fare because customer that booked 18A had cancelled the booking. Hmm...18A again?? I told her about my booking...I doubt I am the one that booked 18A last night and the seat is not reallocate for booking after my payment failed...and I paid extra in fact I should be able to get the zero fare. But the staff told me that the seat was already reallocate for booking after my initial booking failed and the seat was booked by other.

When I think about the booking again, I just felt something wrong...Why the customer that booked 18A can cancel the booking? I was told that we cant cancel or change the itinerary if we buy Super Saver fare. Last night was not office hour, thus booking can be done through Internet or phone only. Normally if we make phone booking, we will not pre-select the seat since payment is not done yet. Another thing is that there are so many empty seats....the probability that 18A being booked and cancelled was quite low actually. So many coincidences happened at the same time...possible?

What is the truth? I dont know...I just felt that I'd been tricked by the reservation system...there are some loopholes in the system design. Although I am not the one that pay the air ticket, I felt sorry for my auntie *_*.