About time – we’ve aways been able to do this with travel agents, and now Qantas lets you schedule a flight and then commit later. Unfortunately there is a $25 deposit, which you lose if you do not commit. It is unclear whether you lose this if you move the flight. (So it isn’t perfect or close).
The next step is to make complicated international trips work as well as good travel agents. I’m a big fan of Flight Center as the staff are extremely well trained, but in this day it should all be possible online.
Lance Wiggs 
One thing I like about travel agents (Flight Centre being my last experience) is that they can book you on one flight and waitlist you on an earlier one. I wanted to fly to Bangkok on a Friday but there were no seats available at the time. I ended up booking on the Sunday and then wait listing for the Friday flight. Sure enough a few days later they had managed to change my flight to the earlier one.
Ace.
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Glen – an airline can technically do that too… they just need to be pestered a bit more…
Lance – re: you’re last 2 sentences, surely you have seen expedia et al.? what’s your impression of webjet’s attempts to be an online travel retailer?
The “problem” with online travel is that, once you move away from just selling airfares, you get into a very broad AND deep product range – meaning that site search, navigation / information architecture, and content relevance are very very important, possibly more so than any other industry going online. Also, people tend to put much more focus and care into their choice of hotels and activities than they do their flights – hence, the agent business is still alive and well. While you and I are happy to book online, the vast bulk of travellers still need a helping hand – so, from the industry’s perspective, you still need humans involved to sell to your customers.
Flight Centre’s a great example – they are now experiencing re-bounding growth, in the face of ‘eveything moving online’, which Skroo Turner once famously said would never happen. Now, he’s admitting its had in-roads on some of their business – especially domestic and short-haul airfare sales (both volume – from customer migration, and commission paid – from airlines leveraging cheaper direct distribution), but he’s bringing the focus back to their core service offering – “unbeatable”, as they’re currently claiming (compared with “lowest airfare guaranteed” 24 months ago). Specifically, it’s sill retail-shop-based, and also increasingly “multi-channel. ”
To hock a cliche, multi-channel is what it’s all about in travel. What companies like Flight Centre need to do – and, increasingly are doing – is flip on it’s head the “travel agent sells to the customer” model. By doing that, they can find a “customer-purchases-travel-from-us” model, from which you can then define segments, build offers, and ultimately configure channels. Key to it is that the customer is now well-informed (that used to be the exclusive domain of the travel agent). The 21st century travel agent needs to make sure that that research piece happens on their site, and that the customer can then book in any channel, perhaps after confirming a key piece of their research conclusions with an agent. (or vice versa – build 2 itineraries at the shop with an agent, pay online at home a few days later once you’ve confirmed dates). Of course, you’ll always still have the issue of supplier disintermediation, which you can counter with a broader product range and / or better service.
(DISCLAIMER – I’ve previously worked for both Air NZ in AKL, and Flight Centre in BNE)
Finally – your initial point on ‘book now, pay later’ – would you let your travel provider offer you a credit/finance deal for the purchase?
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