Travel Troubleshooter: Ticketing errors — and how to avoid them

As far as mistakes go, the one Janet Gordon recently made didn't seem like a big deal. She booked an airline ticket from Toronto to London under the name "Jan."

But what happened next could only be summed up in one word — "chaos" — says her husband, David.

"It was a major hassle," remembers Gordon, a human-resources director for a college in England. At almost every turn, the couple had to explain why the name on Jan's ticket didn't match her passport. "The computers wouldn't allow us to check in and issue a boarding card," he says.

In a business where slip-ups are almost as common as surcharges, the wrong-name-on-my-ticket error is a standout. Here's a look at it and other booking blunders — and how to avoid them.

Wrong name on ticket: Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, airlines and security personnel — and I use the term "security personnel" loosely — might have let a nickname or even a maiden name on a ticket slide. No longer. If you have the wrong name on your ticket, you're probably grounded.

There are two reasons for this: security and greed. The Transportation Security Administration wants to be sure the same person who bought the ticket, and who was screened, is boarding the plane. But when there's an inexact match, the airline can either charge a $100 "change" fee or force you to buy a new ticket. In an industry where every dollar counts, the exact-name rule is the government's gift to cash-starved air carriers.

That's the situation Gordon was confronted with, even when it was obvious that "Jan" and "Janet" were one and the same. There were suggestions that a new ticket might need to be purchased. "We didn't let it get to that," he recalls. Instead, he asked to speak with a supervisor who could finally fix the codes so that the ticket and passport matched up.

How did all of this happen in the first place? Turns out Jan Gordon had signed up for a frequent-flier account under her informal name, so when she booked an award ticket, it also used her informal — and inaccurate — name.

How to avoid it? Triple-check the name on your ticket. Make sure your computer doesn't autofill another name and that the name on your passport or driver's license matches up with your ticket.

The city switcheroo: Selecting the wrong city pairs — going from point "B" to point "A" instead of from "A" to "B" — is another common error.

Jennifer Hyde bought four tickets on Delta Air Lines through Orbitz. But instead of booking them from Boston to Baltimore, she inadvertently switched cities, rendering the tickets completely useless.

"Needless to say, neither Orbitz nor Delta is doing anything to help," said Hyde, a homemaker from Newton, Mass. She faces paying a change fee for each ticket, plus any fare differential, to make things right. Not good.

How could someone switch cities? It's easy. To an inexperienced Web user — and OK, let's be completely honest here, even to some experienced users — those pull-down menus on travel sites can be utterly confusing. When you're typing in airport city codes like BWI and BOS, it's easy to forget which airport goes where.

If you're not paying attention, you could click "accept" all the way through the reservation process and you wouldn't know you'd messed up until it was too late.

How to avoid it? Pay attention. If you're easily distracted, maybe you should be working with a travel agent instead of booking yourself.

Wrong date: Like the wrong city switcheroo, the wrong date problem is an epidemic among air travelers. Part of the reason is simple absent-mindedness: choosing the sixth month instead of the seventh month and then not reading the subsequent screens.

But part of the reason is that airline Web sites are anything but user-friendly.

Nancy Smythe wrote to me recently about her flight from West Palm Beach, Fla., to London, which she booked directly online through the airline. It turns out the carrier had sold her a ticket it couldn't deliver — her connection times were too short. So it agreed to rebook her on a later flight. But when it sent her the new ticket, it had the wrong date on it. When she pointed out the mistake, she was asked to pay a change fee.

"This wasn't my error," she says. So why should she pay for it? Smythe's experience reveals the maddening secret of ticketing mistakes. The airline will try to make you pay for an error — even if it's not yours.

How to avoid it? Carefully review your itinerary before you click the "book" button.

Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine. His syndicated Travel Troubleshooter column runs weekly online at seattletimes.com/travel and occasionally in print in Northwest Traveler. Contact him at celliott@ngs.org.