Originally posted by selfdestrc:
Sorry about your father's death. This may sound crude, but I've never done this before and I am just wondering how you go about proving to the airline that your family member is indeed ill or passed away? I mean do you have to provide them actual medical documents proving that someone's in the hospital? And if so, when does that happen? I mean surely they dont expect you to have the paperwork ready when you're calling last minute to buy a ticket...so do you have to provide them some proof after the flight? Thanks for any explanation, but hope I never have to face such a situation...
My brother died quite unexpectedly in October of 1999 and I was able to purchase a coach ticket from United at the special bereavement price of $989 from PDX to BTV (1/2 the coach price on that day). I know the ticket agent at one of the PDX area CTOs so she didn't give me a very hard time but explained that she must document the hospital, phone number, doctor's name and funeral location/phone number. Needless to say, given that the "event" just happened a few hours prior, for some reason I did not have all of this info handy. After a couple of calls to Vermont, I was able to get the hospital name and phone number. All of this was dutifully documented in my record and fortunately nobody bothered me for any additional details afterwards.