grahamb

Our kids both flew intercontinental for the first time around 3 months. When I was booking for our eldest, I did it 2 different ways: booked the award ticket with TG as "Infant" grahamb and got the ticket issued after he was born. For the paid ticket with EI, I booked the ticket online as J L grahamb - J was the initial of the boy's name we had chosen and L was the initial of the girl's name. They didn't seem to notice that his passport was with J but didn't have a middle name listed

I wasn't as organised second time around so hadn't booked the flights before she was born...

BoyAreMyArmsTired

I think this is a great and informative thread...thanks, all! I'm adding it to the FAQ sticky (and my bad...I still need to do some work on the sticky, and will get to it over the next few weeks).

BAMAT
Co-Moderator, Travel with Children.

larsll

How did you even manage to get a passport so fast? Or are you allowed to cheat and put infant in parent passport?

TLardner

A lot of running around... Norway can turn them around within a couple of days with a birth certificate - our biggest challenge was the photo!

And now our son has his own Norwegian and British passport with an incredibly cute photo..

jbm3906

I dealt with this last year. Bought tickets for TATL xmas travel on AA before the baby was born. Ticket was first put under Infant LASTNAME, then called up after the birth to put the name on the first name ticket with no problem.

Not that this meant everything went smoothly when it came to upgrading to J (http://flyertalk.com/forum/showpost....6&postcount=27), but I would think a regular reward ticket would be more straightforward

Despite the problems we had, I haven't been able to figure out a better way to do this unless you're willing to tempt the fates and put the name down already.

I've found from multiple trips that you should expect traveling with an infant to reveal all sorts of gremlins in the airline's system. It turned out in my case that AA's system had trouble recognizing that the Infant ticket was now under First Name, even though everyone could see the change had been made in the system. Caused all kinds of fun trying to get a boarding pass printed at the check-in desk.

Of course, I'm no longer even surprised when flying BA and a security person or gate agent looks at the boarding pass BA issues for infants that says INFANT and is confused that the passport says FIRST NAME.

yossimills

...and booking 2009 travel.

Alitalia advised that name must = passport, and I should therefore book now, and add an infant later.

Easyjet requires first name to match passport, and will charge a change fee if name != passport name.

simongr

Interesting thread. I booked a couple of J awards to the UK from Oz for next October when babysimpending will be around 5-6 months and plan to pay for the 10% of full fare once baby arrives and has a name...

turing

This is exactly my situation:

I want to book multi-airline international award travel for summer '14 (UA, OS, AC using UA miles) for three seat-occupying passengers, plus a currently unborn and unnamed child. Seems like my options are:

1) Book the 3 award tickets now, call in to add infant to reservation after he or she arrives

2) Book the 3 award tickets plus 1 lap infant with name "baby turing" now, call in to change name to actual after he or she arrives

Recommendations on the best strategy?

Thanks!

GUWonder

I'd book the 3 award tickets now and call in to add the infant to the reservation after the birth and the passport has been received -- assuming you are going for a lap-child infant arrangement.

UA will add a lap-child infant to the booking (for a price) for all those flights even on the day of departure.

mikelat

Wife and I have an award booked roughly 6 months post estimated delivery date for little mikelat. I tried to get American to provide a cost for adding on lapchild to a US-EUR award but they asked for a birthdate and when I told them the January due date they said they could not only not ticket it yet, but they couldn't even tell me how much it would cost. is there any way to ticket an unborn infant in advance? Since their ticket is a % of available ticket cost, I'd like to lock it in today and not risk increases or changes 1.5 months away.

Redhead

You can't. No exceptions. Since it is an international flight, they must have passenger name and passport information to book the ticket. Sorry.

erik123

Many airlines can and will book an infant as: first name: infant and your last name with a likely dob. AA might not be one of them. I suggest asking for a supervisor to see if it is possible.

AA can tell you the fare today if you just ask the infant fare - whether nearly two years or 1 day makes no difference in the fare. You can also check on most OTA's - just put in one adult and one infant.

In general it doesn't matter as the 10% infant fare is usually only valid on the more expensive tickets so booking close to the flight date doesn't increase the cost by much, if at all.

roknroll

If the child is born 6 months before the flight, just add them then. I doubt there will be a cost difference between now and then, since it is so far in advance. You don't need their passport to add them as a lap infant. Just name and D.O.B. You'll need the passport to check in only, as I recall. We ran in to this earlier this year with a trip to Mexico in September for our daughter born mid May.

GUWonder

Passport info is not generally needed to book international flights and get them ticketed. I book most of my internatiomal flights without entering my passport info until just before check-in. Of my last hundred international flights, I've booked nearly all of them without providing any passport data for the booking until check-in or shortly before.

Airlines can fly infants internationally on tickets that say "infant" as first name and "[family name]" as last name. Then at check-in they swipe the passport to store and transmit (if/when required) the legal name to get the PNR updated with the name as it is on the goverment-issued ID. And DOB in the PNR can be changed too.

joshwex90

Bumping an old thread only because it was suggested to go through in the sticky

I've heard recommendations that we book a flight for me + wife, and after baby is born, call the airline (or agent) to add newborn to the PNR as a lap child.

Anything wrong with that?