hopeful_me

Dear All,

Am seeking advice on the following matter. I have recently made a date change in my (Expedia) booking on LH.com, paid the change fee and received an updated itinerary. Conspicuously, the e-ticket number remained the same.

Called Lufthansa and asked why the e-ticket hasn't been reissued. The agent said that, on their end, all looks good, and the e-ticket may have been reissued but with an identical number because the booking class remained the same.

Is there any truth to the agent's claim that reissue need not change the number (or that changes within the same booking class do not necessitate reissue)? Or else, could it be that LH just cannot reissue although they made the change and I must contact Expedia? (The option of rebooking was offered on LH.com.)

Thank you in advance for any thought!

oliver2002

If you just change the date and nothing else the ticket gets stickered, not reissued. If the agent says all is ok the the ticket is fine. If tickets don't align to the reservation the nor usually has a warning message which the agent see immediately.

hopeful_me

Yes, it was just a date change. I didn't know that reissue isn't always compulsory -- thanks a lot for clarifying that!

jreichel

A ticket reissue is mandatory if the price changes, even by just 1 Cent. If it does not the change fee can be collected by issuing an EMD. In this case, stickering the ticket is sufficient, and the ticket number will not change.

hopeful_me

It's getting strange, then.... The fare (not taxes) for my new dates was higher by 40 USD (in the same booking class). But, during the rebooking, I have only been asked to pay the change fee (I knew what the change fee would be, and the payment LH.com was requesting exactly corresponded to that), so perhaps LH.com missed the existence of a fare difference.

LH.com doesn't let me see any receipts (this, perhaps, having to do with the booking being Expedia's), so cannot see the EDM record.... Expedia, on the other hand, doesn't show any record of payments other than that of the original fare.

KLouis

@hopeful_me: None of my business, but if everything's OK with your booking, why do you bother?

hopeful_me

OCD

Would never fully trust what a single agent said if that counters my intuition. However, as oliver2002 and jreichel very kindly pointed out above, ticket reissue isn't mandatory for all changes, which I didn't know.

MSPeconomist

hopeful_me

I did....and it shows fine (old e-ticket no, open for use). I feel pretty reassured I think the value of this thread, for posterity, would be in making public the fact that not all changes require reissue. I somehow managed to go through 20 years of flying without picking that up

MSPeconomist

hopeful_me

Yes, still remember those.... "Stickering," nice word.

mozilla

"Stickering" is jargon for ticket revalidation, right?

@hopeful_me, no worries, you did the right thing to verify this, I know from experience bad things happen if you turn up at the airport with unsynced res/ticket, and it's not like the airlines are any proactive in informing you of this (although they know you will have problems).

Note that on a UA-only itinerary, back when it was still visible on Saudia, it wouldn't even show the changed information in case of a simple revalidation, you would still see old dates/hours (although your ticket info did change on UA's system internally).

oliver2002

It was not for the entire line, just flight number, date and status.