You should always check the name on your passport before booking plane tickets, a couple from Brisbane, Australia, learned the hard way, who saw their vacation budget take a hit after a simple first name mistake.
“I begged them on the phone: ‘Please, you can’t do this, it’s all the holiday money gone in a flash’,” lamented Australian Kate, alongside her partner Phil, in an interview on the Australian current affairs show A Current Affair on Thursday.
Last July, the couple who wanted to treat themselves to a well-deserved month of vacation in Europe managed to find return tickets for the price of $2,400 Australian, or the equivalent of approximately $2,145 Canadian, each, via Virgin airlines, to Melbourne, then Qatar Airways to London.
Jumping on the opportunity, the man then booked the tickets for himself and his wife, without realizing that Kate’s passport presented her instead as “Katherine”.
“It’s an administrative error, I think I married Kate in church, and not Katherine,” her husband told the Australian media.
Except that upon realizing the error, he would have tried to correct it on the website, before learning that he had to cancel Kate’s ticket – with partial refund only – and buy a new ticket… sold this time for the sum of $4700 Australian.
“Their reasoning was that they didn’t have time to change the name of the ticket, but they had time to sell us a new ticket,” whispered Phil, on the Australian show. They just took advantage of the whole situation, especially the peak travel season, and the time crunch.”
But according to Quentin Long of the travel publishing house Australian Traveler, it is crucial for security, but also for intergovernmental communication and visas, that the name on the passport matches that on the ticket.
“You have to understand the details, there are no shortcuts. If you’re looking for the cheapest airfares, you have very little room to maneuver – if there’s a mistake, you’ll have to pay,” he warned, according to A Current Affair.