Checking-in

 Sunday Sept 11

This was our first vacation since Covid. Were were going to visit 4 new countries in Europe and this was Jason’s first trip overseas. It is sure to be an exciting adventure. Our trip included myself (Trevor), Bryan, Mark and Jason. Expecting an overbooked flight I was ready to check in exactly to the minute 24 hrs before flight time, as soon as online check-in opened.

There were three of us on my reservation. Bryan and I were cleared to check in but Jason’s reservation had a problem and he could not be checked in online. Jason has a hyphen in his last name which was causing a discrepancy. When the reservation was first made they dropped the - and combined his two last names into one long name. His AA frequent flyer name would not accept the - and just left a space between the two names and when we attempted to check in online the system scanned in his Passport which did show the - between his names. So his name was spelled three different ways and therefore the discrepancy required a person at the airport to physically check him in. Because we were all on the same reservation the system would not allow any of us to check in.

I spent hours on the phone trying to resolve the problem realizing that a missed flight would mean we miss our connection to Barcelona.

It was soon clear that the only way to resolve the problem was for Jason to go to the airport in person to check in and fix his Passport dilemma. We decided it would be in all of our best interest for him to do it today rather than wait till Monday and risk missing the flight. So he went and was successfully checked in and given a seat.

We thought that solved our problem but even though he was now cleared, because of several unsuccessful attempts to log in earlier, Bryan and I were also blocked from checking in online. After more phone calls there was nothing else to do but also check-in in person at the airport, but we were not able to go at that point and it would have to wait until the morning.

Trying to be prepared to be bumped we looked for alternative flights and routes but there was only one other possibility, a 7AM flight out of Little Rock but that would have made things even harder to manage. We decided our best course of action was to leave the house earlier than we planned the next morning hoping we were lucky enough to get a seat. Failure meant we would miss our flight to Barcelona.

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