littlevoices

Thought I'd ask the hive mind and get a few views on this so that I am, when needed, eventually prepared for whatever pain I am sure awaits (maybe I am wrong).

Situation is as follows:

• Booked a cash RTW ticket (Global Explorer) in business for 2 adults and a child that is spread over a year. Broadly the routing is:
• (1) Japan - Hong Kong // (2) Hong Kong - Fiji return // (3) Hong Kong - Dubai / Doha - UK - Hawaii - Japan
• Flight (1) already flown, so ticket is activated / locked in
• However, now a baby is on the way
• By the time they arrive will have flown trips (1) and (2). So what is left is a fairly substantial "Almost around the world" set of flights that are spread over a few months and starting a few months after baby is born (I have a backtrack return on a separate ticket in the middle that will be easy to add the baby to, I presume)
• Ticketed by Cathay
• Flights that will not have been flown will be on plenty of carriers though: CX / QR / BA / AA / JL

As such, need to get the baby on the plane with us in a lap seat. Curious how this can be done and if there are experiences
I am wondering, what am I buying....

1. Can CX just add the baby on as though they travelled on the whole RTW ticket from Japan (this would be fine, as 10% of this fee+taxes is likely to be the cheapest. Perhaps I should just add an infant now whilst the currency and price point are attractive and call them "lap baby" or something?
2. Do I have to start another "RTW" trip just for baby starting in HKG (will be twice the price of #1, but still in the grand total of things not that much)?
3. Or am I going to have to call each airline in turn and add the infant on a leg-by-leg basis (could get super pricey due to YQ)?

Any experiences welcome, obviously eventually I am going to have to do this, just wanted to get any views of how hard it is. If it was super difficult I may be tempted to arrive early at HKG on another flight one day and see if they can fix it whilst I'm at airport ticketing for example, or I can just wait till baby is born and then give CX a call one day with all the details

freed0m

The least each and every airline can do is to price an infant lap fare segment by segment.

it surely will be very expensive .

littlevoices

Just to depress anyone making this decision, this was the end result, with one nasty exception - QR flat out refused to let me buy an infant ticket, even at the airport, and denied boarding to the person with the infant (we had an alternative ticket booked, but in economy... I did want to force the point with them to test out airport control).

To put the cost in perspective, the single infant tickets for the various legs were far in excess of a child fare RTW, however the problem is that the infant needs to be accompanied so it was still outweighed by the savings on the adult fare. The fares below include taxes/YQ (whatever they are, if any)

• CX: 600USD -> Wouldn't consider them helpful, it took 4 attempts and many hours on hold/messaging waits
• BA: 1,200USD -> Very helpful and professional, though clearly expensive
• JAL: 900USD -> Very helpful and professional, though they did ticket originally in D, and then later called up within 24 hours and made me re-ticket to J for double the price.
• AA: Free!
• QR: Complete refusal to help, ended up having to buy a one-way economy fare for about USD1000 for one leg where they were the only operating airline and I couldn't switch, and unfortunately the plane was nearly full so I was stuck with a Y fare

So the total cost of adding on the flights was nearly USD4000, and I had to separately make arrangements for one other QR leg (Doha-Manchester).

One interesting learning was that most of the airlines (BA/JL) would only ticket the infant in full "J" class, rather than "D", which increased the cost further .

erik123

As an aside - if you think a baby might be on the way before you fly the first leg, you can typically book an infant ticket using a temporary name - e.g. infant smith. Though how easy this is would likely depend on the ticketing carrier. An experienced TA might be a better bet.