I read an article on the CBC.ca website this past fall that got my attention. It was a very sad one about a gentleman from Nova Scotia who was not allowed to get on the first leg of his flight to the Emerald Isle because the name on his ticket varied slightly from how it appeared on his passport.
Like me, you are probably thinking, “How the hell did that happen?”. I will explain. I was startled by the piece because a similar thing happened to me on our trip to Ireland and Scotland in September and October. My tale had a much happier outcome, however.
Let’s begin by reviewing what happened as reported in the article. This is probably an article that everyone who travels should read, so I am providing a link to it here in the title “3 missing letters in his name cost man $10K trip after Air Transat and Porter fail to fix ticket”.
Doug Lee, his wife Nancy, and their best friends were booked to fly from Halifax to Toronto where they would then board their direct flight to Dublin. When they arrived at the Porter Airline check-in at the Halifax airport it was pointed out to them that the name on Doug’s ticket did not exactly match the name on his passport. The ticket said “Doug” instead of “Douglas”.
As such, they would not be allowed to board the flight to Toronto. As reported in the Globe and Mail article…
“Doug was not allowed to board the plane, his wife stayed behind, too, so they both missed out on a $10,000 trip they’d saved hard to enjoy.”
Yes, attempts were made to rectify the incredibly minor issue, all to no avail. Before I offer up the details of why this happened as was outlined in the CBC News article, I will tell you about what happened to me. And as you will see the error on my ticket was even more egregious than the tiny error on Doug/Douglas’s.
My Airline Ticket Name Drama
The Love-goddess and I and our friends flew to Dublin in September on the Irish national airline, Aer Lingus. We had flown with them previously, and I still had an online account set up with them from our first flight. When we decided to fly with them once again, I simply went into my Aer Lingus account and booked our tickets.
And that is where the problem occurred.
If you have been reading my blog for a while, you have probably figured out that my name is Greg McCaughey. The first time we flew with them the name on my passport was stated as follows, “an initial for my first legal name that I don’t use, my shortened second name as my parents chose to call me “Greg”, and finally my surname.
This was a leftover from the days when things were somewhat more loosey-goosey and you could have your passport name match how you were generally known. Since then, I acquired a new passport. When I went to our local passport office to renew, they said that people were now legally required to put their legal first, second, and surnames on their passports.
However, they also said for those of us who had these irregular names on our passports we could “grandfather” them and keep it the way it was. I decided to go the full legal name route because I knew there was an outside chance that I would arrive in some country, and they would not be receptive to me having an unusually named passport.
So, my current passport now states “my unused legal first name, full second name, and my surname.
The short of it is, when I went into my Aer Lingus account and booked my ticket the only thing I changed was my passport number and I did not tweak to the fact that the name that would end up on my ticket was not the same as the full legal name on my now current passport. And it did not dawn on me that this was the case until I tried to check in online the night before our flight.
Fortunately, I had not read this frightening article about poor Doug before this little drama unfolded or I would have been deeply troubled. 🙂 I assumed that because the name on my ticket quite closely matched the name on my passport, I was going to have no problem getting on the flight after a little explanation. And that is pretty much how it unfolded.
When I arrived at the check-in counter, I explained the situation to the staff member on duty. She did have to check with someone in management, but very quickly they simply changed the name so that it matched my passport and issued me my boarding pass. Easy-Peezy.
On the flight home from Dublin, the woman at the check-in counter changed my name herself. Even less of a hassle.
So Why Did Doug Get Penalized and Not Me?
The reason I was not adversely affected was because I bought my ticket directly from Aer Lingus to travel on an Aer Lingus flight and there were no other parties involved. This was not the case for poor Doug.
Too Many Players Involved
In Doug’s case, there were several players involved in Doug Lee’s ticketing process. First and foremost, it was their friends who booked all the tickets. They would have had everyone’s passport numbers, which you would require to book anybody’s flight but probably failed to realize that “Doug” was in fact “Douglas”.
The second issue was that this was a “codeshare flight”.
I am going to quote liberally from the original CBC News article because they state quite clearly what the issues were and how things unfolded. First of all…
“The issue, the couple discovered, was the fact that their friend had booked the group’s tickets on what is called a codeshare flight — essentially an agreement between airlines to sell seats on each other’s flights.”
“Although Doug’s ticket was purchased through Air Transat, the codeshare flight was operated by Porter Airlines.”
When they arrived at the Halifax airport, they went to the Porter Airline counter to check-in. That was where the small mistake was first discovered and where it was pointed out to Doug that he would not be able to board their flight. The Porter employee indicated that…
“Air Transat was responsible for facilitating any name corrections as it sold the tickets to the Lees.”
And the only way that he would be allowed on the flight was if Air Transat corrected the ticket. After frantic calls to Air Transat…
“An Air Transat agent on the phone said Doug’s name had been corrected in their system — changed from “Doug” to “Douglas.”
“With that agent on the line, Doug says his friend handed the phone to the Porter agent at the counter, who said she could not see the correction on her screen. Therefore, Doug was still out of luck.”
The two airlines’ booking systems were not effectively communicating with one another. OUCH!
There Was Yet Another Player Involved
It turned out that there was, yet another player involved in the debacle. The agency that booked the Porter flight through Air Transat was the discount flight broker FlightHub.
FlightHub is just one of several online sites that consolidate and compare flights and ticket prices so that they can present the cheapest possible flight to the destination to which you are going. Skyscanner.ca is another very popular broker of cheap flights. To quote FlightHub’s website…
“By having exclusive deals with over 400+ airlines we are able to offer the cheapest airfares in Canada.”
Apparently when FlightHub was called from the airport by Doug’s friends who made the booking …
“a customer service rep for FlightHub said it was too close to the flight’s departure to correct the name on the ticket. “
This might be one of those cases where you get what you pay for. When we fly, we have several criteria that we try to fulfill when booking flights. Finding the cheapest flight is never one of them.
Then Things Got Really Goofy
Doug and Nancy offered to pay for another seat for Doug on the same flight, using his full first name of course. Hope was in the air that they could still salvage their trip.
The Porter representative reported that there were…
“no empty seats, it’s full up,”
Nancy retorted with…
“There’s two empty seats! Our empty seats.”
That didn’t work, either. As Porter later explained, they didn’t…
“have the ability to cancel a booking made … for another airline.”
DUH! Double DUH!
The article includes a discussion with Air Passenger Rights advocacy group president Gábor Lukács who reviews the problem, how it should have been handled, and how the various players and systems involved failed.
You would be well served to read the entire article to get a clear understanding of what happened, what should have happened, and possibly to understand the changes that flyers need to advocate for.
My point here is simply to make sure that when booking your flights, you ensure the name on the ticket and the name on the passport match perfectly.
Safe, uneventful travels!
