Can I book a long range flight for two passengers with different feeder-flights?

score:5

Accepted answer

This cannot be accomplished in a perfect way. Air bookings are managed by PNRs, or passenger name records—essentially a kind of database record standardised in the late 1970s. The PNR system doesn't allow it; every passenger on the PNR has to have the same flight reservations.

What you can do is make separate bookings and ask the airline to link the bookings together. In theory, if the airline makes a change to one booking, they will see that they ought to make the same change to the other booking.

However this "linking" is actually just a human-readable note put into the freeform notes field of each PNR, referring to the other PNR; to my knowledge no automated rebooking system will ever try to interpret it.

In reality it is unlikely that you will be separated from your friend in advance; I would say >99% of my airbookings go ahead without an involuntary reroute and when an invol reroute is required airlines are usually happy to accept about what alternative flights will be acceptable to me.

That said, the most likely reason you would be separated is if one of your two feeder flights has irregular operations and is delayed. But then even if somehow you were on the same booking, I am not sure the airline would be happy for the undelayed one of you to wait and be likewise re-accommodated.

So I suggest book your two flights separately, with plenty of padding at your mutual connection point, if possible through a competent travel agent who can link it, otherwise call up and get them linked, and try to keep a close eye on your bookings.

An alternative is for one of you to fly to the other in advance and then start your journey together, but that may be impractical also, particularly on your way home.

More post

Search Posts

Related post