Unable to book on certain airline

[kristin123]

Hello.  I'm trying to assist someone that's trying to book a one way flight from Shanghai to Guangzhou in China and he's receiving this message:

Due to ticketing restrictions on this airline, it cannot be booked online; please call your FCm Travel Consultants to purchase tickets on this carrier.

What does it mean by ticketing restrictions? 

[AshleyB]

Hi @kristin123

This would be a good question for your FCm Travel Consultants. They would have move visibility into the issue. If you have already reached out to them we would love to learn what you discovered. I am sure others might have this question.

[sasrsc]

Each airline imposes requirements for any ticketing. We have grown accustomed to the fact that any agency should be able to issue tickets on any airline to/from anywhere from any point of sale (country). The reality is that each airline can impose restrictions at will. Most of the major carriers are fine. But there are geographic restrictions, and validation requirements. We like to display the content in Concur regardless of the restrictions as  we want our employees to have trust in the system but in the few cases where we have to do a "workaround" then we'll do a show but do not allow rule in Concur. The user can see the flights (as they may want/need them) but we'll say to call us. That's essentially want FCM is saying in your rule. As the airline industry has become more volatile you are seeing low cost/startup airlines who may be trying to do things on the cheap and don't want to play nicely with all the other airlines so they are more restrictive in their rules. In the end the agency may have to book directly with the airline in these cases or use some other tool (outside the GDS). TravelFusion can handle some airlines but that also requires the agency to participate in that conversation before randomly turning on all TravelFusion airlines.