Before you hand it in
How to verify a flight reservation.
It takes about a minute, on the airline's own website.
The check.
Four steps, and no account or login is needed.
- 01
Find the reference
On the document, next to the booking or airline reference. It is short, and it is not your order number with us.
- 02
Go to the airline's own site
The airline operating the flight, typed into your browser yourself. Not a link in an email and not a search advert.
- 03
Open Manage booking
Airlines label it Manage booking, My trips or Retrieve booking. It asks for the reference and a passenger surname.
- 04
Read what comes back
The passenger names and the flights should match your document exactly. Nothing found means there is no booking.
Why it comes back empty.
Four ordinary reasons before you assume the worst.
Using the wrong surname
It has to be the surname as the booking was made, which is the passport spelling. A middle name in the wrong box will fail the lookup.
Checking on the wrong airline
On a codeshare the record often sits with the airline actually operating the flight, not the one whose code is on the number.
Checking after it has expired
An unpaid reservation ends on the airline's deadline, which is between about 48 hours and about two weeks after it was made. After that the reference stops resolving, and that is the reservation working as described rather than a fault.
Expecting it to say paid
A reservation is not a ticket. It should show the booking and the flights. It should not show a fare as settled, and a document claiming it does is misrepresenting itself.
If you have ruled all four out and the airline still returns nothing, there is no booking. On a document sold to you as verifiable, raise it with the seller straight away and keep what they say in writing.
Questions about checking.
On our own documents.
A verifiable flight reservation carries the airline’s reference and the date it expires, and the document includes the instructions for checking it. Run the check when it arrives rather than at the counter.
A flight itinerary has no reference, because no seat was held. That is stated on the document rather than left for somebody to discover, and it is why it is the cheaper of the two.
Get one you can check.
The reference and the instructions are on the document.