Ticket holds have existed in the airline world from the GDS era, where travel agents would frequently block a fare for their customers while they would finalise their plans and then ticket them or drop them. This concept later moved to self-service ticketing as well, and a few years ago found its way in India with Jet Airways, who allowed passengers to Fare Lock, 2016 onwards. While Jet Airways was a chargeable service, you can now put an IndiGo Ticket on hold for free, even as a retail customer.
As per IndiGo, you can now hold tickets for free when you are making reservations on IndiGo airlines, directly.
As per IndiGo, you can hold tickets now for 6 hours by calling their contact centre or using the mobile application, and then complete the payment on their website, for a departure which is at least after 72 hours.
I put this to test to see how the process worked. It did not work for me on the app, and I had made it a point to update to the newest app before even getting down to the process. So then I called the airline to make a booking.
I went through the usual process of going through ticketing, and at the last step, I requested for the ticket to be put on hold. The agent told me about how to process the hold ticket after she would put it on hold, which was to pay for it through the link in the email or at the airport.
Here is what came in the mailbox.
Of course, I did not carry through the booking, and after six hours, this was what I could see.
Bottomline
This is a good one to keep in your back pocket when you have a trip to plan, but your credit card is not in sight. Or when you want to plan and block a fare but not commit. The IndiGo hold feature is something I see myself using sometime soon.
Have you been able to use the IndiGo Ticket on Hold feature? What uses do you see for this in your life?
Well, great feature no doubt but do feel 6 hours is too small to really make it very impactful.
May be a 48 hour or so booking with some charge could also be planned?
P.S- any idea if I can say block 6 tickets for eg. And don’t need to give names? Could be useful than to make a trip plan with friends as such.