It was supposed to be a fun getaway to Sanya city in China for six ladies in Singapore.

Unfortunately, a mistake on their boarding passes cost them their holiday plans.

Mixing up first and last names

According to Chinese daily Lianhe Wanbao on Oct. 13, the six women, one of whom was surnamed Liu, were supposed to board a 3:55am flight on Sep. 12 to Guangzhou, from which they would transfer to Sanya.

They were stopped at the boarding gate at Changi Airport because they had filled up their first and last names wrongly on their boarding pass.

The counter staff for the airline they were taking informed them that they could still catch the plane or subsequent flights at 8am or 1pm the next day if the travel agency they booked their tickets with could amend the details for them promptly.

Liu and her friends reportedly tried contacting the travel agency via their customer service line, but only received a response from the agency at about 6am that day, two hours after their scheduled flight departed.

They also ended up getting stranded in the airport for 12 hours.

Agency said it was the passengers' own fault, and could not fix the error they had made

To add insult to injury, the agency apparently told Liu and her friends that they were themselves responsible for the mistakes and it was not a system error on the part of the company — therefore it would not be able to correct the details or issue a refund on the flight tickets they had purchased.

According to Wanbao, the six of them spent a total of about S$3,500 on the booking of flights and accommodation via the online travel agency.

Common error made by travellers

The unnamed airline spokesperson told Wanbao that mixing up first and last names, as well as misspellings in one's name, are common errors that passengers make when booking flight tickets.

The spokesperson added that the airline company can forbid passengers with erroneous details printed on their tickets from boarding the plane. Even if the six of them were allowed to pass through the boarding gate, they would have been likely to face problems at immigration checkpoints in Guangzhou or Sanya, which would in turn likely be trickier to resolve.

According to Wanbao, however, there is a slightly more positive ending to this: airline company was in touch with the ladies a month after the incident and agreed to refund them S$466 each for their flight tickets.

But the six of them still reportedly incurred a loss of S$1,062 for the accommodation they had booked via the online travel agency.

Top photo via Unsplash

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