US$17,000 airplane ticket?

A couple years ago, in December 2003, I invited my parents to visit me in Indonesia. It was my parents' anniversary so I decided to surprise them with an all-expenses trip to Jakarta including two First Class tickets from London to Jakarta on Singapore Airlines.

I asked my secretary to get some plane ticket prices from Singapore Airlines and the next day she came back with a price of US$17,125 (current price) for First Class. That price sounded about right to me given that I knew business class return tickets cost about $4,000 - $5,000 per ticket.

So my parents flew to Indonesia and had a great time for two weeks and returned to London.

One month later I got a bill from Smailing Tour of $34,250 (current price). When I received the bill at the office, I almost fell out of my chair. I have never heard of one ticket costing $17,125! Sure enough, my secretary told me that the $17,125 was for each ticket and not the total for the two.

I was absolutely stunned, speechless, dumbfounded, horrified and sick to my stomach. I simply could not believe that price, but having checked myself with several travel agencies, the figure of $17,000 plus kept on coming up!

I decided to check one more thing: Buying London to Singapore return and Singapore to Jakarta return separately. Bingo! This route, which is exactly same route (same airline, same plane, plane number, same everything) was priced at $9,496 and $866, respectively, which is a total round-trip price of $10,362 -- around $7,000 cheaper per ticket.

I went to see the General Manager in Jakarta of Singapore Airlines, to see if I could resolve the issue. He noted that yes in fact there was a huge price difference and he too thought it was ridiculous, but there was nothing he could do.

To add insult to injury, he informed me that not only was there nothing he could do to help me but that he could not even credit the miles to my Kris Flyer account, even though I was the one who paid for the tickets, because I was not the one flying.

Needless to say, Singapore Airlines has lost 99 percent my business as I believe they should have done more to assist me with this particular pricing irregularity. I used to praise this particular airline as one of Asia's best-run companies and now I find every excuse not to fly with them.

I guess the moral of the story is take good care of your customers and make sure you have a secretary that knows how to book tickets.

ROBERT ESKAPA Jakarta