Ashguy77

Hi all, I redeemed an award ticket for SFO-LON-ZUR-DEL flight for my wife and daughter (on lap since she is under 2). United charged $1300 for my daughter since they calculate that off of 20% of the price of my wife's ticket (if it was paid by $). SFO-LON was on United metal and then onwards was on SwissAir. While checking in at SFO, United gave 4 boarding passes, 2 for SFO-LON and only one each for LON-ZUR and ZUR-DEL. They said my daughter's boarding passes for LON onwards will be issued in London.

SFO-LON was uneventful but at London, Swiss said that they had no knowledge of my daughter being on the reservation. This put my wife in a very difficult situation and she asked them to do whatever they can to get her on board. She was ready to pay since she needed to make the next flight. Finally few minutes before closing gate, they gave a boarding pass to my daughter.

I have a few questions that I need help with:
1) How can I ensure this does not happen again on return? On return there is Thai Airways and then United. I believe calling both airlines to confirm that they have 2 persons on the reservation is a given. Any advice?
2) I want to complain to United for the trouble caused at London. What's the best address to write this to? And what's the best way to ensure they take care of this deficiency in their reservation system to not cause trouble to any other parent out there?

Thanks,
Ash

samplat

I've run into similar issues in the past with UA award tickets involving other carriers. In our case, sometimes only 2/3 tickets showed up on the other carrier flights even though UA had confirmed all three.

To make sure all is well, I've now resorted to doing the following:
- get each airline's locator codes from UA
- call each airline to confirm they have all the passengers on the PNR
- printout from each airline's website showing all passenger names and eticket numbers (if you can do this, then calling is obviously redundant)

I can understand an agent not being able to issue BPs for a specific leg due to connection or airline requirements but not being able to issue BP for all passengers on a PNR seems like a red flag. if it works for one person on a PNR, it should work for all. I'd try to solve that right there instead of letting the agent pass the buck to the next connection point.

fastair

"Lap children" are not aways given boarding passes, as they don't occupy a seat but rather a lap, which occupis a seat. In fact, up until this week (I havent tested it in the past few days since the software update) CO software on the gate readerswill not even read the infant's BPs. We simply scan the adult BP, and enter a manual entry into the gate reader software to note a lap child is riding with the adult. Allegedly, this week, they did a software update that is supposed to allow the gate reader to scan the infant's boading passes ad eliminate the manual entry.

Not sure if this was the deal. The important thing is that the ticket was issued for the itinerary completely and that each operating carrier uses their legs so that they get their share of the revenue. Can you see the infant's ticket and is it issued for the entire journey?

zabes64

But did you look at booking your wife as a paid ticket and just booking the lap child as the award ticket? Assuming the route was available, the paid ticket is roughly 1400 r/t, your wife would have earned miles and she would have had an extra seat next to her open to be more comfortable for quite literally the same price (assuming the award space was available)

B/c they do 20% of the Full Y price b/c its an award ticket, you get screwed on an award ticket by this.

Just an FYI for the future, hope it maybe helps in some way.

acesflyerSFO

Infant fares are always 10% of the lowest fare class available at booking. So if there are Q fares available it should be 10% of that adult fare.

zabes64

That's what I thought too, but there have been other people that have said that when the airlines get combined, such as in an award situation, the lowest fare available is a Y/B fare because its not a "sold" routing.

hughw

We had a somewhat analogous situation last year. We booked award tickets for my daughter and her lap child, Ruby, through Continental on TAP Portugal EWR to Seville with a connection in Lisbon. When we arrived at the TAP counter at EWR, they had no record Ruby. I showed them the CO confirmation and all was good. Then we ran into the same situation departing Seville for Lisbon on the return. They managed to give Ruby a boarding pass to Lisbon but couldn't give her one LIS-EWR. At LIS, we waited on tenterhooks for what was probably close to half an hour after the bus at the gate to the plane was fully loaded (except for us) for the gate agent to produce a boarding pass. It took so much time that they were running into issues with advance notice to TSA, etc. We were sure they were going to leave without us, but finally the boarding pass was issued and we were on the way.

Incidentally, except for this hitch, I would like to report that TAP Portugal was terrific in Y. My wife and I normally fly TATL in BF, but wanted to be with our daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild, in Y. The seats were relatively comfortable, the food edible, and the cabin crews terrific. And big red blankets for all.

IAATM

All this is good advice, but in my experience getting the 13 digit ticket numbers "013XXXXXXXXXX" for BOTH the adult and the lap child is the trick. Armed with BOTH of these numbers, the agents in any remote outpost will be able to get the baby's BP printed. If, whilst you're booking, the UA agent on the phone says, "Oh, the baby doesn't have a ticket number, since s/he's on your lap," the warning bells should go off long and loud in your ear. Again, if you're paying 10% of the fare for the lap child, s/he gets his/her own ticket number. Like AMEX used to say, "Don't leave home without it!"