Make Sure Your Flight Is Booked Before You Travel
Before heading to the airport, be sure to check the actual ticket number or you might end up paying for $ 1200 on the same day of your flight.
When you book a flight, you will usually be provided with an email confirmation number (the familiar six-digit booking code), but this does not guarantee that your booking is locked. Until you receive your ticket number, your Booking is exactly what its name suggests: flight delay.
At The Points Guy, one traveler shared his hellish experience at the airport after realizing he didn’t have a confirmed ticket number for his flight to Spain:
We were all ready for the trip, or so we thought. The shock came during check- in at the airport , where the agents told us they hadn’t seen our names on the flight’s passenger list. Several executives were called in to tell us that we never got tickets, even though we received a confirmation email and selected our seats months before! Iberia sent me an email asking me to call and verify my identity in order to pay premium tax, but that email was sent straight to my spam folder. Meanwhile, no money was charged from my credit card.
End result: $ 1,200 for same day Economy tickets, payable at the airline counter. Why is this happening? In the Points Guy example, it was a missed payment email. (I ran into a similar issue when booking a trip to Japan; a missed email also meant my seats weren’t confirmed a few days before my trip.)
Typically, you should immediately receive an email with a confirmation code and another separate email with a ticket number within 24 hours, or both in the same email.
However, according to TPG, the award may be delayed; Airlines allow customers to save their booking while they buy or transfer additional points or miles to purchase a ticket. If you forget to make the necessary changes, you may be left without a ticket.
Delay can also occur when you use Reward Points to book flights with a partner airline. Problems processing payments can also delay your confirmed ticket.
To completely avoid this problem, look for the ticket number next to your name on your booking or itinerary. (If you are booking on behalf of a group of people, there will be one booking number, but multiple ticket numbers representing each passenger.) Better yet, call the airline and validate your ticket.
If you can check in, this also means that you have a valid ticket; just be sure to do this before arriving at the airport so you don’t panic at the airline counter.