{"id":11512,"date":"2024-09-23T13:45:08","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T01:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=11512"},"modified":"2024-09-23T13:45:08","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T01:45:08","slug":"baby-not-allowed-to-fly-after-travel-agent-puts-own-name-on-ticket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=11512","title":{"rendered":"Baby not allowed to fly after travel agent puts own name on ticket"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><b>Auckland man Gagandeep Singh said his baby couldn&#8217;t take a flight after a travel agency staff put their name on the child&#8217;s ticket.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Singh reached the airport three hours before the flight only to find the staff member&#8217;s name was listed as the adult accompanying his daughter.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>He said he can&#8217;t afford to keep the baby in New Zealand after damaging his back in an accident.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>An Auckland father says he is &#8220;disappointed&#8221; and &#8220;angry&#8221; after his baby couldn&#8217;t take an international flight because a travel agency employee put her name on the child&#8217;s ticket.<\/p>\n<p>Gagandeep Singh, 31, booked a ticket through the Mann Travel agency to send his three-month-old daughter overseas with his mother.<\/p>\n<p>Singh was shocked when he reached the airport to find the agent&#8217;s staff member had written their name as the adult accompanying the child.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When I asked for my boarding pass, the airlines&#8217; staff called out the name of the [agent&#8217;s] staff. I told them she was just a staff member at the travel agent who booked the ticket.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They [airlines&#8217; staff] said no, her [staff member&#8217;s] name is given as the adult who will be travelling with your baby.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was disappointed. I was furious.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The father of two had to cancel his baby&#8217;s travel.<\/p>\n<p>Mann Travel referred Stuff to their official response on Google Review.<\/p>\n<p>The agency said [using a staff member&#8217;s name] is a &#8220;common practice&#8221; when the adult and infant tickets are booked through two different travel agencies.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Since infants do not have a dedicated seat, as infants travel in their parents&#8217; laps or in baby cots provided by airlines, we issued the ticket and held the PNR (passenger name record) under the adult&#8217;s [their staff member&#8217;s] name in our system.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The company said after an earlier flight was cancelled, Singh requested them to re-link the infant ticket to the newly reissued adult ticket [his mum&#8217;s ticket], which was booked through another agent.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;However, after contacting the airline, we were informed that this was not possible due to a difference in booking classes between the adult and infant tickets.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We explained this policy clearly to [Singh] during our conversation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>About six months ago, Singh booked his mother&#8217;s return tickets to New Zealand through a different travel agent in Tauranga.<\/p>\n<p>His mother travelled to New Zealand in March and her return flight was booked for 13 September.<\/p>\n<p>After his daughter was born in June, Singh decided to send her to India with his mother on the return flight.<\/p>\n<p>Singh contacted the travel agency [Mann Travel] to book his baby&#8217;s ticket so the baby could travel with his mother on 13 September.<\/p>\n<p>The airline later cancelled the flight booked for 13 September.<\/p>\n<p>He claimed the agency failed to link his mum&#8217;s rescheduled ticket with his baby&#8217;s rescheduled ticket.<\/p>\n<p>Singh said he wanted to send his daughter to India as he faced extreme financial hardships.<\/p>\n<p>He said his life changed three months before his daughter was born when he suffered a serious back injury, and could no longer work as a farmer in South Auckland.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I had a back injury. I have not been working for months. I am not eligible for financial support because I am on work visa.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There have been times when local Gurudwara (Sikh temple) helped my family with food.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Six months ago, my mum travelled to New Zealand to see my wife who was pregnant.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I decided to send my newborn to India because I am not in a position to feed my children and provide them with a good accommodation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The family of four have lived in a garage for six weeks and recently moved to a one-bedroom shared accommodation.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know where to take my baby now because we told the landlord only three people would be living in one room.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My wife had to join a new job after sending baby to India, but she can&#8217;t do that now. She has to take care of the baby.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The travel agent&#8217;s mistake has made it so hard for us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A Malaysian Airlines representative told Stuff it was clearly a mistake by the travel agent.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I can say surely this is not our problem. They need to admit what they&#8217;re doing, actually.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They can&#8217;t put staff name in the booking. When they are doing a dummy booking, they need to put the mother&#8217;s name.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a very simple logic question. When you go into the aircraft in the aviation, you want to fly on the day and then the [grand]mother&#8217;s name is not same as [in] the original [ticket booked] for the infant. If you being the authority in the airport, would you let the people to fly?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The name of the passenger [accompanying adult] is different. That is why, the infant was unable to fly.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is 100 percent [on the] travel agent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Migrant Rights Network&#8217;s volunteer Sher Singh said they get a lot of cases where naming errors and ticket issue errors were made by the travel agencies.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It puts a lot of stress on people when they are not able to board the flight.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When you buy tickets, make sure you have an e-ticket number issued to you and not just the PNR.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Source: Stuff and RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Auckland man Gagandeep Singh said his baby couldn&#8217;t take a flight after a travel agency staff put their name on the child&#8217;s ticket. Singh reached the airport three hours before the flight only to find the staff member&#8217;s name was listed as the adult accompanying his daughter. He said he can&#8217;t afford to keep the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11514,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11512\/revisions\/11514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}