These are the initial dangers of air travel
Airlines can be less than clear about correcting ticket mix-ups, forcing you to be hyper vigilant
When booking airline flights, your name must be spelled correctly and must also match your passport name.
Getting the name right is important. You probably know that. Mistakes can lead to denied boarding and being required to buy a new ticket.
But you may not know that most airlines give you only 24 hours to correct mistakes without a penalty. Waiting longer than 24 hours to check your email confirmation, and make corrections right away, usually means paying a change fee and higher costs for a new fare.
Take the case of Greg Yashan, who booked a cruise with Princess Cruises and a return flight with Lufthansa from Toronto to Rome. He received a confirmation from Air Canada on Jan. 6, 2018, and noticed that Air Canada had a co-share arrangement with Lufthansa to handle its booking.
He did not notice that his airline passenger name (Gregstephen Yashan) was not identical to his passport name (Gregorystephen Yashan).
He finally spotted the error in August while checking in a few weeks before the cruise. He thinks it might have been an autofill problem, since he uses Greg when signing or applying for things.
Air Canada made him cancel and rebook, resulting in an extra $999.23 payment to add three letters to his first
name. He retained the same seat on the same flight.
As a goodwill gesture, the airline sent him a $300 discount coupon for a future flight within one year. But he kept asking why it cost so much to fix his name and received several explanations:
A lower fare has more restrictive rules about changes. Higher-priced fares allow more flexibility.
His ticket contained flights on other airlines, so multiple reservation systems were involved.
Because so much time had passed since the booking, the fare he purchased was no longer available.
Finally, he was told to stop asking.
“Continuing to exchange emails will not change our position. Respectfully, we consider this matter closed,” Air Canada said on Dec. 14.
Yashan was frustrated about not being able to move his complaint to a higher level.
“Air Canada does not have an escalation process and finding contact information to speak with someone is next to impossible,” he said. “I did succeed in finding someone in their head office, who promptly sent my complaint back to Customer Relations.”
Here’s what surprises me. The emails never mentioned the 24-hour deadline for changes without fees. Nor did they warn Yashan to take greater oversight in the future by checking email confirmations.
Opportunity missed.
Stan Thompson also had a problem with a passenger’s name on an Air Canada booking. Luckily, he did manage to get a correction without penalty.
Instead of writing to customer relations, he found the names and email addresses for Air Canada’s executive contacts at a U.S. consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org.
He sent an email to Twyla Robinson, general manager of customer relations, and sent a copy to me, describing a ticket mix-up that resulted in higher costs and delays.
“My son moved to Alberta four years ago when he was 21 years old, and each year, his mom and I bring him home for Christmas to spend some time with his family,” he told Robinson.
“We booked a return plane ticket back in October from Calgary to Toronto, but there may have been a glitch with the online process. Even though I put my son’s name in as the passenger, it defaulted back to my name when I put in my Aeroplan number.”
The problem was discovered only in December and his son was told to cancel the ticket, which cost $641.71 and buy a new one. He would get a credit only for the tax of $101.71.
“We had to purchase a new ticket for $952.51,” his father said. “To add insult to injury, they would not even give me the same flight I had already booked, which caused a lot of logistical issues on our end.”
His email to Twyla Robinson, sent on Dec. 23, drew a quick reply from Anthony Doyle, managing director of customer contact centres. He promised to have his team review the case.
Early on Dec. 24, Thompson got a call from Air Canada’s Nova Scotia office, giving him a full credit for the extra money paid above the original ticket price.
His story shows that no-cost corrections can be made beyond 24 hours under certain conditions, especially when the airline may have some responsibility for the problem.
The lesson is to check your tickets for accuracy as soon as you make the booking. Each airline has different rules for correcting mistakes.