In these days of 'budget' and low cost airlines there tends to be a complete lack of flexibility in any circumstances. A local gentleman who is almost 80 got his revenge a few days ago. He was booked to travel to the UK but his wife who was to be travelling by sea with their car (he hates sea travel so was to fly) broke her wrist so the trip had to be cancelled. Despite producing medical certificates the airline wouldn't give him a refund as he hadn't taken out insurance and the fare was 'non-transferable' and non-refundable'. So what did he do to stop them re-selling his seat which they could if he was a 'no show'? He turned up at the airport, booked in, cleared security and reported to the gate when his flight was boarding, at that stage he told the staff member that he wasn't catching the flight! It was too late for them to put on a standby passenger so it will have taken off with his seat empty.

I have slightly mixed feelings here, I fully applaud him and approve of his actions - I am just glad that I wasn't a standby passenger desperate to get on that flight. I don't think airlines ought to be able to sell a seat twice, if the seat was then sold again once you cancel they ought to give you some of the money back.

Hmm yeah I know what you mean Sue. Good on the guy for getting a bit of satisfaction from the situation, as long as it wasn't at the expense of an 'innocent standby-er', as such. Trouble is, reselling is probably factored in to profit margins; if too many people did it the airlines would very likely use it as excuse to jack up ticket prices!

I do think it's appalling that we are all so very much at the mercy of these businesses who, to all appearances, have no motivation other than to make money no matter what the 'human' costs involved might be. I also wonder how much the insurance on the ticket would have cost - not being a flyer I have no idea, but it just really seems that they get you coming and going, as such.

A few months ago we were affected by the strike on SouthAfrican airways. My son had to mke a connection to Singapore airlines so we drove from Harare to Johannesburg and now the airlines are refusing to reimburse the HRE JHB ticket. They really do have it all their own way.

Hopefully someone other than the airline benefitted from my 'no show' on 22nd when I was so worried about the possibility of fog disrupting flying that I had booked TWO flights with different airlines going to different destinations (as in my 'insurance' post), one in the morning and one in the evening. For the record there was no fog that day so the second ticket was unused.

Talking of flight, have we all seen this? BBC News
I think it is great!!

That is absolutely brilliant. Sometimes I watch the 'docu-soap' Airline, which is about EasyJet and shows 'problem passengers' and they often refuse to fly drunks until they sober up but that is the first time I have seen a report of a passenger being stranded in such a way - I know they often refuse to fly them back home (sometimes visiting drunken sports teams are refused flights back to the UK from Jersey) but dumping them is priceless.

What surprises me is that the small island would have a runway long enough to take an Airbus.

Excellent - the idiot deserved it. I have no patience with belligerent drunks in any situation, but on an airplane they would be 10 times worse!

I love it! Just what he deserved. After reading some of the comments on the story, everybody else seems to be in agreement although I don't think I'd go as far as throwing him off without landing as some people suggested.