[richardlw]

Some people are just stupid.

My wife went to the Aerosur airline office to find what days there were non-stop flights from Santa Cruz to Tarija and was told she had 5 choices a week. She chose today at 2:00 pm.

We got to the airport and they said the flight goes through La Paz (13,000 ft altitude). My wife can't go there because of high blood pressure, so after arguing about the routing, she said to change it to tomorrow through Cochabamba, and the airline said we had to pay the change fees. After arguing that to various employees that it was their mistake, she got the supervisor, who exclaimed: "Of course the direct flight goes through La Paz".

I wanted to ask what dictionary she was using but broke out in such a sarcastic laugh that I had to walk away.

We went to the consumer protection desk and the guy wouldn't take the complaint. He said that was reasonable and it is her fault for not checking what she was told. She called the ticket office where she bought the tickets and they insisted the airport was wrong, that her computer says direct to Tarija. (no definition of "Direct" on the screen, apparently)

Non-stop from Santa Cruz to Tarija is 291 miles. Via La Paz it is 761 miles.

[wkharris2001]

direct flight in the aviation industry is any flight between two points by an airline with no change in flight numbers, which may include a stop over at an intermediate point. The stop over may either be to get new passengers (or allow some to disembark) or a mere technical stop over (i.e. for refuelling purposes only). These are often confused with non-stop flights, which are direct flights involving no intermediate stops

[jimworcs]

A direct flight in the airline industry is often via another city. This is to mislead passengers into booking with airlines, thinking they are getting a non stop flight, when in fact they are not. This is often not made clear to passengers at the time of booking in order to avoid putting them off, as the airline is entirely run for the convenience of management and shareholders and has no customer ethos whatsoever.