A simple booking mistake

When you’re booking flights for 10 people, there’s plenty of room for something to go wrong.

One of our readers has shared a simple mistake that almost caused problems for her family on a recent trip to Queenstown . . . and it’s one many travellers could easily make.

The reader was responsible for booking flights for a family group of 10 travelling between Australia and New Zealand during the school holidays.

When entering the details for one of her grandsons, she used the shortened version of his first name — the name the family had always called him — rather than his full given name as it appeared on his passport.

It wasn’t until the family began travelling that the problem became apparent.

“We were challenged every time at exiting airports and I was sternly told that if we had been travelling anywhere else but between Australia and New Zealand, he would not have been allowed to leave on our flight,” she says.

“It was a very good lesson to learn and could have ruined a holiday that I had planned for nine months.”

What travellers should know

It’s an easy mistake to make, particularly when booking for family members, but the safest approach for international travel is to enter each passenger’s name as it appears on their passport.

Middle names can be a little more complicated. Depending on the airline and destination, leaving out a middle name may not necessarily prevent you from travelling if your first and last names are correct. However, requirements can vary, so travellers should always check the rules of their airline and destination.

The same care should be taken with hyphenated or multiple names. Where possible, enter them as they appear on your passport and follow the airline’s instructions if its booking system doesn’t accept spaces, hyphens or other characters.

The easiest way to avoid trouble is to have everyone’s passports in front of you when making an international booking, rather than relying on memory. And once the booking confirmation arrives, check every passenger’s name immediately. If you spot an error, contact the airline or booking agent as soon as possible. Fixing it at the time of booking is likely to be considerably easier than discovering it at the airport.

It’s also worth checking the name saved in your frequent flyer account, particularly if you’ve been a member for years or commonly use a shortened version of your name.

As our reader discovered, a few extra seconds checking the details could save a lot of stress, and potentially your holiday.