Lao Airlines — which site is the real site?
The Lao national airline, Lao Airlines, has a single official website, http://www.laoairlines.com/, yet if you do a Google search, you’ll often find a second website, http://www.laos-airlines.com/ which is a far more professional looking site than the admittedly amateurish effort that the Lao Airlines has made — one certainly hopes that their real planes fly a bit steadier than the animated ones on their website. But who is behind this second website? It turns out to belong to a French travel agent, who having snagged a few handy domain names is impersonating the websites of three regional airlines (Lao Airlines, Air Mandalay and Yangon Airways) and making a tidy commission on any reservations it receives.
So what is wrong with that? In the free-wheeling internet, probably not too much, until you notice that nowhere on the laos-airlines.com site, does the agency identify itself as being a travel agent rather than a national airline. Working on the assumption the customer thinks they’re booking with the actual airline, there is no mention anywhere (that we could find) that they’re an agency. While deceptive, this practice probably isn’t illegal, but now reports are surfacing that they’re not only deceptive, but have also been late paying their bills (see comment #3) resulting in considerable inconvenience and anxiety to customers who didn’t realise they hadn’t booked direct with the airline until they showed up and found out their tickets were not valid!
We’d suggest staying well clear of this agency, and instead, despite the amateurish appearance, use the official Lao Airlines website.
Prahok @ September 24, 2005
Dear Sir,
First I would like to thank you for compliment regarding our website(s), but I would like also be clarify some important points. We are the PSA (Passenger Sales Agent) of Lao Airlines in Europe as clearly indicated on the home page of our websit - http://www.laos-airlines.com/index.asp - and aslo on the official Lao Airlines website at - http://www.laoairlines.com/agency_general%20agent.html - All our documents as invoices and e-vouchers clearly show that. Second, we are not a Travel Agency, we are airlines representative. If you need more details in order to provide the real & correct information on a website, please to feel free to contact me at robertd@laos-airlines.com or directly the Commercial Director of Lao Airlines - Mr. Rada Sunthorn - at Vientiane; rada@laoairlines.com. Last but not least, we are pleased to announce that we are now GSA of Air Bagan and glad to offer the same quality of service. Robert Dubois - MD