jmharvey

My son and I have the same first and last name, but different middle names. We've been flying together for years on various airlines without any issue, but yesterday was supposed to be our first flight on Alaska.

About a month ago, I booked an award ticket on Alaska using American miles on aa.com. When we booked, we entered the usual info: First, Middle, Last, DOB, and AAdvantage number (my son doesn't have an AAdvantage number, so I left that blank). Booked the ticket, no issues. Got a confirmation email, no issues. Went through the codeshare seat-selection rigmarole on alaskaair.com, no issues. My first indication that something may be amiss was when I tried to check in online, and got the dreaded "cannot check in online, please check in at the airport" message. Still, no worries, I budget extra travel time when traveling with kids, so we got to the airport with hours to spare.

I checked in at the Alaska ticket counter, and the ticket agent clearly had some difficulty, but after a few minutes printed our boarding passes, and advised me that next time I should put "Jr" and "Sr" on the booking (never mind that we're not Jr/Sr, and if I did that, the name on my ticket wouldn't match the name on my ID). Boarding passes in hand, we breeze through security, bop around the airport a little bit ("let the first grader figure out how to navigate the airport" is a fun game when you've got the time), and at 5:25 are just about the first people at our gate for a 6:15 boarding/6:55 departure.

6:05 rolls around, and we get paged to see the gate agent. Alaska doesn't have our middle names on our tickets. Or our DOBs. And their system has decided that since my son and I have the same first name and last name, we must be the same person, so only one of us can be checked in at a time. Every time one of us checked in, it would un-check-in the other person. And since American issued the ticket, Alaska can't change our name. The Alaska gate agent calls American, and gets put on hold. She calls over her supervisor, who calls someone else at American, and they're also put on hold. While we're on hold, boarding starts. And then finishes. And then the door closes, and the plane pulls away, with two empty seats where my son and I were supposed to be. At 8:15, more than two hours after I got paged to the gate, American finally answers the phone, updates the ticket to include our middle names, and rebooks us on a flight 24 hours later. They said "proactive customer service" would be reaching out to me, but I haven't heard from them yet. Alaska offered a hotel voucher, but I was able to stay with my parents, so I declined it. Other than that, I haven't been offered any compensation, by Alaska or American. yet, even though it seems pretty clear that they both screwed up here, other than an "upgrade" to premium economy.

So:

• First, a warning, if you're in the not-so-uncommon situation where multiple family members share a first and last name, be careful booking tickets on Alaska metal, especially through partner airlines.
• Second, I was surprised that the gate agent didn't have more authority. I guess it's been the better part of a decade since I was flying enough to have any kind of status, but it seems like it wasn't that long ago that gate agents were basically gods as far as deciding who could or couldn't board a flight. And, to be clear, the gate agent (and supervisor) certainly seemed to be doing everything in their power to get us on that plane.
• Third, I found it scandalous that Alaska gate agents don't have a more effective way to communicate with their codeshare partner airlines than "spend two hours on hold as the plane flies away."
• And, finally, my question: anyone have any idea what compensation I'm entitled to/should ask for here? It seems like both American and Alaska screwed up in multiple ways, but it's so far out of left field that I'm not sure what to expect here (especially since I booked with miles).

Fingers crossed I get out on tonight's flight! (The Alaska boarding passes still only have Firstname Lastname printed on them, so I'm a little nervous...)

manneca

I can't help with the AA and Alaska issues, but my son and his father have the same first and last names, different middle names, but the same middle initial. My son books his tickets firstnamemiddlename squished together. All his traveling ID has both names on them, so there isn't any issue. You might want to consider something like that for the future.

VegasGambler

Oh man. Alaska doesn't even have premium economy...

tai4de2

Perhaps the OP was referring to AS's Premium Class.

https://www.alaskaair.com/content/tr.../premium-class

If it quacks like a duck, ...

LWkitty

I'm pretty sure they meant Premium Class, which Alaska absolutely does have.

chrisl137

I've been discovering lately that AA IT systems don't play well with either AS or B6, despite established partnerships with both. It wouldn't surprise me to find that it's a universal problem across airlines, but I haven't been unfortunate enough to have to deal with a large collection of cross-airline relationships. And everybody seems to be suffering meltdowns in their telephone customer service. I had to call AA a few times over the past few days and had wait times of 4 to 8 hours. B6 had wait times of 1 to 5 hours (had to call them, too, thanks to a cancelled flight that they put me on a redeye for 36 hours after my scheduled flight, and in a middle seat, to boot). Even my company's after-hours travel agents who used to get you to an agent within a few minutes had an hour-ish callback, and they ended up fixing most of my problems (AA had to and did fix one of them).

VegasGambler

I've flown plenty of "premium class". Premium economy too. If premium economy is duck, "premium class" is some dried out week old chicken.

Seriously, it's just an extremely dishonest marketing term for economy plus. It's not actually a class of service (unlike PE, which is)

jmharvey

Turns out crossed fingers were no match for a "pilot shortage" (or possibly the picketing pilots at SFO), so I'm grounded for another day. AS initially rebooked us on a flight for Tuesday, but I went to the airport and found the gate agent who helped me yesterday, and she managed to get me on a UA flight for tomorrow (in 38B and 38E, so much for "premium economy," but I guess there's only so much you can expect when it's not even an alliance partner &#128556.

fly18725

AS does not sell Premium Class as a separate class of service and there’s no benefit in jumping over other posters for semantics.

Delta does sell Comfort+ as a different fare class, which does create some issues.

Davvidd

Would it be the same if it was tickets issued by Alaska Airlines as well?

VegasGambler

I assume the the problem here is 2 pax on the same res with the same name (2 pax on the same flight with the same name has to happen all the time)

Would splitting the PNR have fixed it?

SEA-Flyer

You didn't do anything wrong. You were both ticketed with your legal names. You had every right to be on that flight and the only reason you couldn't is because their crappy system couldn't handle your names.

I'd request for the IDB compensation of 400% of the one-way fare. https://www.transportation.gov/indiv...ping-oversales

FlyingUnderTheRadar

My guess would be that the system would see two tickets for the same person and cancel one of them.

Except IDB does not apply so bringing it up is moot and would just confuse the situation. I would just ask for a full refund, even though some service was provided.

notquiteaff

Especially when a poster says

Surely we all know what they meant, but this forums is lately obsessed with correcting names like Premium Economy and Alaskan Airlines instead of offering advice to people coming here looking for help.

It’s not an IDB case, but I would request significant compensation for the inconvenience and file a DOT complaint if AS pushes back. At the very least it might lead to the DOT pushing AS to explain what happened and perhaps causes them or AA to look for the root cause.

Surely it happens that two unrelated John Smiths travel on the same flight. Likely with different DoBs, which these two passengers would also have.

ficklepickles

Somewhat similar situation (not quite, just correlated by name, but I recall a few years back I was boarding a flight (ELP - SEA) and a non-English speaking immigrant family boarded the plane, however the oddity was two members of the family had a ticket for the same seat - a sibling pair (male / female) of mid teens, which I believe had the same name on their passes.

I didn't quite understand why they were both sitting in the middle seat next to me (window) and it wasn't until the plane was fully boarded that the FA's noticed and had the GA come to address. Luckily there were open seats on the plane so that they were taken care of.