These days, even the most hard-core fans of airline paper tickets have largely gotten used to the idea of e-tickets. Many don’t even bother bringing the receipts or itineraries with them to the airport.
Not so fast. E-ticket confirmations should be examined for some all-too-common errors. Print them out. Take a good look at names, times, seat assignments, upgrades and connections.
Without a hard copy, it’s easier to miss details, especially in an era of overflowing email in-boxes. Who has time to read everything? Even if the reservation was just confirmed by phone.
Unfortunately, as a old manager of mine once said, “If you don’t think you have time to do something, then you really don’t have time to do it over.” And some version of this definitely applies with the airlines’ e-tickets today.
Here are five examples of e-tickets issues that need careful checking:
1. Check upgrade requests. United Airlines prefers travel agents who request mileage upgrades for clients to do so by computer, basically sending a message in the record as to what you want, and “queuing” it over. (Think of it as a rudimentary email system.) Then United agents work the requests. They don’t send the record back to the agent, but once done, the record will show whether the upgrade is confirmed or waitlisted.
In this case, I sent a roundtrip request for two clients between San Francisco and Chicago, using the husband’s miles. I already knew both upgrades would be waitlisted but the clients were fine with that. I looked at the record the next day, and noticed, the return had been neither confirmed nor upgraded. The agent had just forgotten to do it.
Then I looked more carefully at the record. They were flying out on a 10:43 a.m. flight to Chicago, and the upgrade was waitlisted for the 9:51 a.m. flight. Suffice it to say, nothing good would come of that. I called immediately, and an apologetic reservations agent fixed the problem.
Now had I not noticed the issues they would have probably been told at the airport that the upgrade had never been requested. And while I would have had a computer trail proving that it had been, the clients still would have missed out on any upgrade chance.
If this were a one time incident, I would laugh it off. But the fact is, most airline reservations offices are understaffed and overstressed. Most upgrade requests are handled correctly, however I have had several upgrades waitlisted for both the wrong flight and the wrong date.
2. Look carefully at companion tickets. American Airlines earlier this year booked a free ticket for a client’s spouse to go with a paid ticket I had issued, and booked the spouse to return a day later. (The client in question had called the airline with my confirmation number, so American had the exact itinerary he wanted matched.)
3. Be wary of upgrades without seat assignments. Other little things to watch for, confirmed upgrades without seat assignments. Which might not seem that serious, but especially for travelers flying together it can be especially frustrating to have had seats together in coach, get upgraded, and then get to the airport to find no seat assignments and no seats together.
4. Make sure names on e-tickets are spelled correctly. For those who book by phone, check spellings of names too. Yes, your name might have a simple spelling, or you might have several people all with the same last name, and yes, you might have spelled it out carefully. But airline computers don’t have a “spell-check.” Besides, agents have heard so many odd spellings of common names that what might seem like an obvious mistake to you might be less apparent to them.
Whatever the reason, check your ticket carefully beforehand. Checking it when you check in at the airport is the wrong time to find out that name is spelled incorrectly.
Similarly, a schedule change might or might not mean that seat assignments from the first flights would transfer over to something similar. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Showing up at the airport with a family of four around the holidays with no seat assignments may elicit some sympathy from gate agents, especially if you had seats when you booked. But the agent still may not be able to miraculously get seats together.
5. Double check schedule changes. Also, look for schedule changes that result in missed connections. If an airline changes flights so that the first flight arrives later than its connecting flight leaves, one would think that they would get a phone call. Many times that just doesn’t happen.
And no doubt there are other things I have left out. But the basic premise remains the same.
When an e-ticket is wrong through a mistake or miscommunication (whoever’s fault it is), the time to fix it is immediately after the mistake is made — while it is still fixable.
(Photo: Thomas Becker/flickr.com/creative commons)
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