Scifience

You should be able to do this with a fully refundable, changeable ticket. At the very least, you could just cancel the ticket, get a full refund, and buy a new one.

The only real point to this would be if you think the flight would get booked full before you knew the name for the ticket.

Aviatrix

I can, of course, only talk about the system that I used when I was working for a UK-based airline, and things may be different your side of the pond... but no, there was nothing stopping us from changing names in airline bookings. Did it many times.

Marathon Man

hmmm, this makes me wonder about baby travel...

we flew overseas with our then 5 month old and NW told us she had to have a paper ticket that was conjoined to ours, and while we used 50k miles on what would have been about a $600 RT econ flight, the airline said international baby tix are not free like they are in domestic travel. They are 10% of the full fare, which ended up being about $2,500, so the baby's ticket--to not even have her own seat--was $250+tax. They sent it to us with the wrong dates on it by mistake and when I called to tell them this, they said it could be fixed upon check in but I said no and asked them to mail me a new one. I had to mail the old one in first but they compensated my postage with some miles and an E cert for anything on NWA.com or in person bookings. So everything worked out but I wonder if her ticket was actually in the category of a fully refundable ticket, etc? Like, what if something changed and baby didnt end up going on the trip? Would we lose that $250 or not?

MM

Marathon Man

well then i totally like your system better!!

now then, what was the fee to do so? did it HAVE to be charged? or could you use discretion to waive it? Who, if anyone was empowered to do so and who watched who for what? oh you mean they just trusted their employees? well then I REALLLLLY like your system better! cheers!^ ^ ^

And, if I ever get in this situation, should i like fly to the UK to get around this fee? (hmmm, that's almost like a mileage run in a way, if you think about it)

MM

lisagurl2

I'll probably wait until after this trip and change it for the next one so everythign can match...as I recall as well, they take the old passport when renewing or changing it, so I can't show them the old one.

Aviatrix

I was only talking about what was physically possible in the system I was using in my job, NOT about what the company rules were.

There was nothing in that particular reservations system that would have stopped any reservations agent from changing the name in a booking by using the Edit function - just like there is nothing to stop cars from exceeding the speed limit.

We were free to use the Edit function to correct typos, or to put in temporary placeholder names in cases where (for example) someone suddenly realised, half-way through making a booking, that he couldn't remember the surname of someone he was travelling with. For everything else there were rules that had to be followed.

Marathon Man

To know it is that easy and always that possible almost makes me upset at the agents who are typing in the data. I have run into situations in life when they almost seem to NOT MIND entering the data wrong because they know that now if you have to change it, they can effectively charge you! This is overzealous but I have a theory that sometimes, people in such positions only really have a few chances in their otherwise menial policy-ridden jobs to exhibit any level of power and flex some muscle. They tend to flex it when someone shows a weakness or makes a mistake. Sad but true, I think.

crhptic

You do need to provide it, but (at least in the U.S.) it will be sent back to you along with your new passport, and will have a hole punched in the cover to indicate it has been replaced with a newer model