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(c) Elliott Publishing.

Senior Tourists Ignored
Cheap Charlie · June 23, 1999

Last week, Net Discrimination was the title. Senior citizens, who for years have been courted by the airlines with special coupon deals and overall discounts on virtually every flight, have been left out of the Internet online booking revolution.

Being left out is an understandable hiccup when dealing with new systems and new ways of doing business. However, not notifying seniors of this situation and not having a workaround nor any policy in place for these disenfranchised travelers to get lost frequent flyer miles is no laughing matter.

This is the stuff of class-action suits.

At this point no airline seems to be concerned. Only half of the airlines even bothered responding to my queries about what type of policy they are planning to set up for seniors who can not use the Internet systems.

Some airlines and online agencies already have their house in order. Northwest and Continental do not have a problem. They already have a senior-friendly Internet booking site in operation. Expedia.com and 1travel.com also have the capability of handling seniors. Obviously, it can be done.

The airline laggards are US Airways, United, American, Southwest and Delta. They all claim that fixing their systems to allow for senior-fare reservations is a top priority. But both US Airways and United indicated that the earliest time that the "fix" can be set up is the end of the year or perhaps the first quarter of 2000.

I suggested a modest solution. Online booking systems should have a button telling seniors. "Click Here," which would bring up a screen telling them that they can not use this system and expect senior discounts. That way, seniors will at least have a choice: Take the good deals they find on the Internet or call the 800 number and get their senior discount. Only Southwest indicated that they would pursue that course.

One Internet reservation system executive noted that many seniors use their system even without the normal senior discounts. I’ll suggest that they use the system because they don’t know there are additional discounts available through the 800 number. Show me the senior who wants to use the Internet and pay more vs. the senior who can pick up the phone and pay less, and I’ll eat my words.

Come on. It does not take a degree in rocket science to get a notice in the fine print of coupons flooding frequent flyer mailings urging customers to use the Internet for booking. It can’t be such a massive problem to simply add a notice to the first page of the reservation screen telling seniors they can’t use this system for senior discounts. And customer service offices should be prepared to award the up to 1,000 frequent flyer bonus miles being awarded to users of the Internet systems to seniors who request the bonus.

After all it is not the seniors' fault that they have been passed up by airlines rushing into the Internet race.

Charlie Leocha is the Boston-based author of Travel Rights: Know the Rules of the Road and the Air Before You Go. Cheap Charlie appears every Monday on this site. E-mail him at cheapch@aol.com or access his Web site.