beachjunkie

Just wondering if anyone else has had this issue and also don't understand why the airlines don't notifiy customers of this issue.

I flew with my familiy on Delta airlines last year. All tickets were bought and paid for 4 months before the departure. When we arrived at the airport 2 hours prior to departure, they would only issue ONE boarding pass for me and my 2 year old son (who is a Jr.). The only explaination given was that since we have the same name, they could only give us one boarding pass. Since the flight was sold out, despite that fact that we paid for all 3 tickets months before, we could only use 2 tickets. So my wife and son were forced to fly on without me and I was finally put on a flight 6 hours later and met them at our destination. Our return trip was only uneventful due to me calling the airline well in advance of our return to "split" the reservation into two separate confirmations so that both boarding passes would be issued.

Since that time, we have booked all trips separately to avoid any boarding pass issues. Has anyone else experienced this problem?

emma69

That is crazy! Tons of people have shared names - my friend's little boy is [same name] Jr. and flies with his dad all the time.

wharvey

Is there anything else to this story? Seems unusual that this would have happened this way... as Emma said.... many father/sons with same name probably travel together. I am curious... did you leave off the "Jr" in the ticket? So it did look like the same person?

djk7

Never heard of such a thing, what airline was it?

beachjunkie

I aqree! I have searched and searched and have found NO ONE else that has had this same problem. The last time that we booked with SW, the reservations clerk seemed to understand why that was an issue so she gave us separate confirmation numbers. But still NOTHING on any of the airline websites.

beachjunkie

I honestly don't remember if the reservation was made as Jr and Sr and I'm not even sure if the website allowed for the suffix (although I know that Southwest does). One of the gate attendants for Delta told us to just buy my son's ticket under his middle name. Sounds simple enough, but I was under the impression that you had to buy tickets under the legal name, which I did. My biggest complaint is that Delta charged us for all 3 tickets and didn't even notice the issue.

Ancien Maestro

Don't want to step on toes.. but I would have to say a bit of compensation is in order for the dropped ball.

chgoeditor

One suggestion:

Next time you're flying together, make sure that each of your frequent flier numbers are attached to your tickets. Then at the airport, print your boarding pass using the "search for flight using FF#" option at one of the check-in kiosks.

tentseller

Just add Jr or Sr to the name of flyers. There is a suffix field to add that in with DL.

Mynameismud

bookings with same firstname/name on different pnr could even lead to one of them being cancelled by airline revenue management as duplicate booking.

guv1976

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

Suggest that the OP contact George Foreman for advice.

http://unasked.com/question/view/id/5573

xSTRIKEx6864

Can't a child age 2 and under fly without a ticket? Plus they don't need ID, so you could sneak a 3 year old on free, too.

This is absolutely ridiculous. A common name like "Ryan Thomas" or something could easily have two people totally un-related flying on the same flight. Will one of them be screwed by the airline?

shailenderkumar

So ridiculous how can they do that, this is very common that people usually put their son's name over there name and put jr. at last.

Ancien Maestro

3 year olds are techinically require by FAA to purchase their own seat.

MarqFlyer

DL policy states that a child can fly without a ticket only if under age two. Sounds like OP's 2 year old son needed a ticket.

Agree with the earlier suggestions to add suffixes and frequent flyer numbers to the next reservations.