From: mf0w+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michel Fougeres)
Newsgroups: rec.travel.air
Subject: Re: Is it SAFE to buy another person's airline ticket?
Date: 30 Aug 92 04:42:38 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Excerpts From Captions of netnews.rec.travel.air:
24-Aug-92  Is it SAFE to buy another p..  USENET NEWS@adobe.com (755)       
>From: usenet@adobe.com (USENET NEWS)
>Subject: Is it SAFE to buy another person's airline ticket?
>Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 19:17:49 GMT
> 
> 
>Many people apparently get stuck with non-refundable tickets 
>when their plans change, and these people sometimes try to sell 
>their otherwise useless tickets. I personally have no argument 
>with this practice, as it potentially benefits both buyer and 
>seller. But: is it SAFE to buy such a ticket? Will the buyer be 
>asked for ID even if he (or she) arrives at the ticket counter 
>with ticket in hand? What an unpleasant surprise it would be to 
>pay good money for an airline ticket and be denied the right to 
>board the plane!
> 
>I know it is common practice to be asked for ID when picking up
>a ticket that has been charged over the telephone. But if I have 
>my ticket in hand, am I safe?
> 
>Information very much appreciated.
> 
>Alan
>asanders@adobe.com


Once I travelled to Europe with a fly-by-night company that was very
cheap.   The trip had to be NY-Brussels with a dutch airline.   When you
were ready to come back to the US, you were supposed to go to their
office in Brussels and they would then give you a return ticket.  The
day I went to their "office" in Brussels, I realized they had given me a
bogus address, which got me in a violent argument with a Belgian woman
who was REALLY living there (at that address.)  I got very alarmed but
later I thought of calling that company/agency at a phone # they had
given me.  Fortunately the phone # was for real, a woman asked me: 
"would you like to fly back to-day ?"  "Yes!" I screamed.  "Well, then,
why don't you come to the Airport around 13h30, a plane leaves at
14.00hrs," she suggested.  And she added:  "when you get to the Dutch
Airline gate, look for me, I will be handling tickets from behind a
pillar.   Ask for Marguerite (or whatever name.)"  I did just that and
at the airport I found "Marguerite" half hiding behind a pillar with a
bunch of tickets in hands, apparently all from people who at the last
minute had cancelled their flight with that airline.  After she found my
name on her list, she just crossed off the original name from the ticket
and wrote mine instead.   "Go! try..." she said, sort of wishing me good
luck.  (We were 12 or 15 travellers in the same situation, having dealt
with the same "travel agency".)  So when I was ready to board the plane
and a Dutch airline official asked to see my ticket and my ID, he
exclaimed in Dutch:  "but it is not the original name!"   "I know, I
replied in English, my travel agency did that" (the name replacement.) 
After a few seconds he made a gesture of hopelessness (remember, we were
12 or 15 travellers, each one with a ticket whose name had been
scratched and replaced by the pen of "Marguerite").  That Dutch airline
official then gestured, meaning that it was OK for me to board the
plane, after all.

Morality:  It is possible to travel with someone else's ticket if the
person in charge of boarding is nice enough to let you to (maybe he was
getting his cut from that fly-by-night outfit, I don't know, he looked
very honest.)

But at the end of the Summer I learned that some students who had
purchased their "cheap" tickets from that same fly-by-night agency as
mine but had attempted to return to the States later (like in Mid or
end-August) had found the "agency" folded (i.e. nobody answered them
when they called that number) and they had lost all their money.   They
had been obliged to purchase a brand new ticket Brussels-NY.  For some
of them it had been a terrible blow.

That's all I know about travelling with some one else's ticket.   I
guess one has to pray to the god LUCK.  (Maybe, if questioned, one could
explain that the person with the original name on the ticket is a very
close friend and was caught in a terrible accident, and that that same
person, now in a hospital, was in a desperate need for the money you
paid him/her for the ticket...)           

                                Michel

=====================================================================
If the facts are against you, argue the law.
It the law is against you, argue the facts.
If the facts and the law are against you, yell like hell.

                                (MURPHY)