Air Fare Frenzy : Van Nuys: Ticket-holders jam flyaway terminal to request rebates. American Airlines started a price war Wednesday by halving costs to many destinations.

Pennsylvania resident Lee Herman was hoping to spend Friday, the last day of his L.A. vacation, sightseeing, doing the town, maybe touring the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

But instead, a weary and disappointed Herman spent most of the day standing in the cramped confines of the Van Nuys Flyaway Bus Terminal, hoping to get a partial rebate on his American Airlines tickets that he purchased several weeks ago.

The normally quiet terminal was almost bursting Friday with hundreds of passengers like Herman who had purchased airline tickets before Wednesday, when American Airlines sparked an airline price war by halving fares to many popular vacation destinations.

But many ticket-holders, including Herman, did not count on spending as long as four hours in slow-moving lines in the Woodley Avenue terminal.

“This is frustrating, very frustrating,” said Herman, a 63-year-old retiree who had spent $1,700 on tickets for himself and his wife to visit L.A., Chicago and Dallas. The couple was planning to leave today for Las Vegas.

“There is so much we planned to do today, but this is a chance to save some money,” he said. “So I’ll just stand here and think about doing those things.” He said he did not know how much money he would get back, “but I hope it’s a lot.”

Faces tensed and arms crossed impatiently as the line remained immobile for minutes at a time. Tempers flared and some in line shouted inquiries into whether enough personnel were working at the counters. A few counted the number of minutes it took for those being waited on to complete their transactions--around 10 to 15 minutes a customer.

Ticket counter workers said they were too busy to discuss the surge in business. But one employee noted that he hadn’t seen the terminal “this busy in many, many years.”

The half-price sale offered by American applies to tickets purchased at least seven days in advance of travel within the continental United States and requires a Saturday night stay-over. The sale, announced Wednesday, was quickly matched by most of the nation’s other main airlines, including Delta, Alaska, Northwest and United. That immediately set off a rush by thousands of ticket-holders nationwide to return them for cash refunds, then repurchase the same ticket at half the cost.

Some ticket-holders were wondering if the long wait was worth it.

Vanda Lendin of Tarzana said she walked into the terminal in the early afternoon to get a half-price rebate on her $310 Northwest Airlines ticket to Iowa, and almost turned around.

“If I had something better to do, I would just say, ‘forget it, it’s not worth it,’ ” Lendin said. “As it is, I’m going to be late for a 3:30 appointment. I’m not going to make it.”

Frank Davis, 62, an electrical contractor from Sun Valley, said he was angered by the wait, “but I really need the money.” Davis was hoping to get back half of the $420 he spent on a ticket to Green Bay, Wis.

“That will be my beer money,” he said, laughing. “I drink a lot of beer.”

But for others, the ordeal to get the rebate was less than painful.

“I’ve only been in line for 15 minutes,” said Steve Lusicka, 40, an attorney who had previously purchased two $290 tickets to Seattle from Delta Airlines. A half-hour later, he left the counter with a smile, clutching a $290 check.

“That wasn’t hard at all,” he said. “Look, look what I’ve got.”

Denise Gilbert, 33, who bought three $418 tickets to New York from American Airlines in order to attend a family reunion, endured a nearly four-hour wait with her 9-month-old daughter, Heather.

But she was thrilled nonetheless when she got a check for $618.

“That’s a nice little piece of change for clothes shopping,” she said.