The simple flight-booking mistake that cost one couple almost $12,000

Sean Davidson (not his real name) and his wife were looking forward to their Himalayan trek when they checked into their Sydney Airport hotel.

It was September 28, 2024, the night before he and his wife were due to take a Thai Airways flight to Kathmandu. Concerned that he hadn’t received a notification from the airline, Davidson checked his booking and got a nasty shock. Instead of September 29, the booking was for August 29.

“I managed to speak to someone in Thailand that Saturday night and the next possible flight was 10 days away. Our house was let, hotels were booked and paid for, our trek in Nepal paid for. We had no alternative but to hunt around and take a Sydney-Kathmandu flight with Singapore Airlines in business class for $9034.”

The couple missed their Thai Airways flight by a month.

“Usually I do my own booking online, but this time because I was using points it was complicated,” says Davidson. “I provided instructions in writing to Thai Airways Sydney and they booked it exactly according to my instructions.”

Thai Airways has something to answer in this case. Airlines routinely send confirmation to the email address that is added when the customer makes their booking. It would appear that whoever made the booking at Thai Airways either failed to include Davidson’s email address, made a mistake in the address or included an airline email address. That was an oversight, but that doesn’t absolve Davidson. Bottom line, he should have checked.

Worse was to come. In his Saturday night conversation with Thai Airways’ customer service, Davidson had been assured that the booking for their return flights from Kathmandu to Sydney was intact.

“Days before flying back home we checked and found that the return flight had been cancelled too and had to pay business class as far as Bangkok, although there was some refund on the second leg,” he says.

“If we had been told that the return bookings had been cancelled, we would have had eight weeks to rebook at sensible prices, at a cost of say $1500 instead of $3848.”

On top of the $3120 the Davidsons paid for their original return flights from Sydney to Kathmandu, those unintended flights ended up costing $11,840, for a total of $14,960.

The takeaways

Whether you make your own flight bookings or do it through a travel agent or another third-party, always check the details. If you book through an online travel agency, you will receive an email from the agency confirming your booking, not from the airline. Also, you will have a booking reference number issued by the agency, not a Passenger Name Record, a six-character code that allows you to check your booking on the airline’s own website.

Airlines and online travel agencies routinely send email confirmations – always check the ticket details.Credit: iStock

If you fail to show up for a flight, any subsequent flights on the same booking are automatically cancelled. When Davidson contacted Thai Airways, its representative failed to advise him that this had happened. If you miss a flight, contact the airline to avoid the no-show itinerary cancellation. Despite what an airline’s customer service representative might tell you, check the “Manage my booking” section of the airline’s website.

Travel insurance will not cover you for missed flights. “I attempted a travel insurance claim but realistically it was rejected,” says Davidson. Nor will Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission, the competition regulator and national consumer law champion, come to the rescue. On its website, the ACCC states: “The airline is not obliged to offer any compensation for missed flights.”

After his misadventure, Davidson wrote a letter of complaint to Thai Airways. In their response, the airline stated: “We regret we are unable to offer compensation as you have requested as there was no error on Thai’s part. You booked your flights and did not board the aircraft resulting in a no-show for Thai.”

Some airlines have what is commonly known as a flat-tyre rule. If you arrive late at the airport and miss your flight due to circumstances beyond your control, your airline might take pity and squeeze you onto the next available flight at no extra cost. This requires proof, and sleeping-in or not allowing for traffic delays are unlikely to cut it.

Apps that organise your itinerary

While checking and re-checking your flight bookings is essential, there are a couple of apps that put your bookings into an orderly itinerary, and help avoid mistakes along the way. TripIt is one. Sign up and either synch it with your inbox to search for bookings, or forward your confirmation emails to [e-mail] and presto, your itinerary is done for you. The basic version is free but for frequent travellers, TripItPro does a whole lot more, at a cost of $US49 ($78) a year.

TripCase is another itinerary management app but it gets slightly less rosy reviews than TripIt.

I use AwardWallet, primarily for tracking points balances, but the app also has a trips facility which scours incoming emails for flight, car-hire and hotel bookings, and even some restaurant bookings, and creates a daily itinerary.