Reservations - Verify Drop-Off Flights
If you have the FlightView integration with LiveryCoach, you are used to verifying all your airport pickups so you can confirm the time and make sure the flight exists.
But many of you do not verify drop-offs—since you are just dropping someone off at the airport, rather than meeting a flight, it is certainly not necessary.
That said, verifying flights for drop-offs can prevent certain types of service errors.
For example, I know of an incident once where a customer called the limo company at 4am looking for his car. Dispatch looked at the board, and said, “sir, we have you in for a 7am pickup.”
The customer then replied, “No, my flight is at 7. I need the car now.” When management reviewed the phone recording later, what the booker actually said was “I need a pickup for 7.” Not “for a 7am flight”, which is what he meant, nor “I need a pickup at 4am”. But had the agent obtained the flight information and verified it, this service error could have been avoided (even though, strictly speaking, it was the booker’s fault.)
When you verify a flight for a drop-off, the system will give you a warning if it sees that the estimated drop-off (based on the trip duration) is too close to the flight time—that is, 30 minutes or less (or more than 6 hours—which could mean there is an AM/PM error.)
For example, suppose you have the duration for 45 min to the airport, and you try to book a pickup for 10am. When you verify the flight, the flight leaves at 10:01am (meaning the booker is giving you the flight time, not the real pickup time). The system will warn you with the following message:
But many of you do not verify drop-offs—since you are just dropping someone off at the airport, rather than meeting a flight, it is certainly not necessary.
That said, verifying flights for drop-offs can prevent certain types of service errors.
For example, I know of an incident once where a customer called the limo company at 4am looking for his car. Dispatch looked at the board, and said, “sir, we have you in for a 7am pickup.”
The customer then replied, “No, my flight is at 7. I need the car now.” When management reviewed the phone recording later, what the booker actually said was “I need a pickup for 7.” Not “for a 7am flight”, which is what he meant, nor “I need a pickup at 4am”. But had the agent obtained the flight information and verified it, this service error could have been avoided (even though, strictly speaking, it was the booker’s fault.)
When you verify a flight for a drop-off, the system will give you a warning if it sees that the estimated drop-off (based on the trip duration) is too close to the flight time—that is, 30 minutes or less (or more than 6 hours—which could mean there is an AM/PM error.)
For example, suppose you have the duration for 45 min to the airport, and you try to book a pickup for 10am. When you verify the flight, the flight leaves at 10:01am (meaning the booker is giving you the flight time, not the real pickup time). The system will warn you with the following message:
If you select No, then you have the opportunity to select a different flight—or, you might want to go modify the pickup date/time instead.
If you click on “Yes”, the system will let you proceed—but then the DO field in the trip will turn red to warn you that there could be a problem.
If you click on “Yes”, the system will let you proceed—but then the DO field in the trip will turn red to warn you that there could be a problem.
The DO field will also be red if the flight time is more than 6 hours after the estimated drop-time. Of course, red doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong (maybe the customer has meetings all day at the airport and then flies out), but it does mean it’s worth taking a second look.