The other day I took a visitor back to the airport, on her way home to BRU.

For some reason she had her brother (same surname) buy her ticket using his credit card. Ticket bought back in april, thus long paid, and long CC bill paid presumably.

First, in BRU they gave her some trouble, checking CC data, who paid, etc. Brother being on holiday, traveling and out of reach.

At YYC on the way back again, although she had checked in online fine, when bringing her luggage, similar story, took the agent ten/fifteen minutes to sort things out.

Now, I understand that there are cases of people copying CC numbers, and buying tickets using a stranger's CC. Had happened to me on a couple of occasions. So, I can understand that a ticket bought on someone else's CC might raise a red flag.

However, when using my CC to buy a ticket for my wife, who uses her maiden's name, it's never an issue. Additionally, if the Cc bill that included the charge was paid by the cardholder, clearly the charge is legitimate so why a red flag?

Anyway, in the end things worked OK. But I wonder, why the issue in the first place?

The way this was explained to me before by someone was that at the time of ticket purchase, a 'flag' is set in the system to verify your credit card at checkin. Even if flight is 3 months later. As if it is a fraudulent ticket, even after the credit card bill has been paid, the airline could still have to refund the funds to the original credit card.

But the cardholder only has 30 days to dispute a charge?

I'm finding depending on the company and even specific to the attendant handling the check-in.. verification using credit card is sometimes used..

I've had requests where the airline wants to see the specific credit card purchased with.. No problems as we always travel as a family unit..

I know on UA, they will sometimes do this. However, they also put a sentence or two, in red so its hard to miss, when they email out the itin that the credit card used for the purchase must be shown at check in. If not, the pax will need to buy a new ticket in order to travel.

Happened to me once years ago, and it is a CC fraud thing. In reality, you can bring the CC to the airport at any time prior to travel and an agent can clear the flag. Also, at least at UA, once its cleared, it is good for the itin, so it isn't asked for on the return.

Not sure what the algorithm is for determining who gets this, but seems to me a start would be if the name of the passenger, particularly the last name, doesn't match. My guess is if some of the billing info. entered is slightly different (i.e. typo in billing address, etc.), they can still accept the card, but may do something like this for verification.

The airlines only have themselves to blame for credit card fraud because of the encouragement to use their websites in their runaway cost-cutting mode. Nobody is asked for a c/c verification if they bought their ticket from a travel agency, since the TA assumes the risk of identifying the validity of the passenger in advance and if he doesn't and the charge is disputed he is the one who gets the debit memo charge-back.

I've had to produce a corporate card from time to time for verification purpose, usually when I use it to buy tickets on the day of departure. How well it goes, or even whether it even takes place, seems to be a question of training as much as anything else.

The worst case was in BRU incidentally, where I booked BRU-FRA-YYZ about four hours before departure. AC flagged my card for verification but the LH staff (for the first leg of the flight) first wasn't aware that verification was required (took them 15 minutes to figure out why they couldn't check me in) and were then unable to verify my card in AC's system. I ended up buying a brand new trip on a personal card from LH. Bottom line, hassles for me, and a lost Exec First sale for AC to the benefit of LH.

I guess it depends from card to card and/or country to country. I have 90 days to initiate a dispute for most of my cards.

Consideration of when you can dispute a charge depends on the contract and its stipulations..

For example.. if a company goes bankrupt and you are served the papers.. and you didn't receive the prepaid service you paid for.. the cc company will launch an investigation to verify.. in the end will reverse the charges..

Happened to us with Wedding pictures.. where the photographer went under.. got all the money back..

So what happens if between the purchase date and travel date, the card you bought the ticket with is lost or stolen and replaced with one with a new number? Too bad?

I have often seen the requirement to bring a CC. In all my years of flying, I have never been asked to show a CC at an airport. This includes my wife and/or kids when she is travelling alone and I have paid for the ticket on my card.

+1.. never been asked to show cc as proof of payment for an airline ticket..

An aside.. picking up prepaid tickets at Disneyland.. I was required to produce ID and the cc paid for, to be able to pick up the tickets at will call.. we could have printed out the tickets, but no printer while travelling..

Wow, lots of misinformation in this thread.

Some people have automatic payments set up for credit cards, so they don't look at each statement. The assumption that just because the bill was paid that the charge was legitimate is not correct. Sometimes corporate cards are paid and the statement looked at later.

In the US, you have 60 days from the time you receive your statement with the charge on it to dispute it, not thirty days. If the charge is made on the first day of a statement cycle, that means it will be a month before it's on a printed statement, and they have another 60 days past that, so it can easily be 90 days to dispute it.

There are countless threads here about travel agencies and airlines wanting to verify credit cards when the person purchasing the ticket is not the person flying. United for example still checks on occasion, there was a thread started a few weeks ago about Travelocity checking, etc. It's really not that uncommon at all.

So yes, you can be asked by the travel agency to have the card holder verify the charge.

There have also been cases where the airline has charged back a travel agent for taking a card transaction like this where it was a fraudulent charge. When the card holder put it in dispute, the airline (US Air) blamed the agent for accepting it.

It's also pretty common for hotels if you are paying for somebody else to be asked to produce the card.