Booking award ticket for unborn baby

Toni Perkins

Level 2 Member
Has anyone here had an experience booking a future flight for an unborn child on an award ticket? I've googled the crud out of it, and I know that if you actually buy the ticket and fly with the airline you purchased the ticket through, you can do a sort of dummy booking and then they can change the name, birthdate, etc. once the baby is born. Unfortunately, there is no info on booking with an award ticket, and when I spoke with a few AA reps yesterday, we are trying to book a flight to SYD on Qantas, they said that since I am not actually flying with AA, there is no way they can change the info at a later date.

I could just take her as a lap infant, but it's a 17 hour flight, and that just sounds like the worst kind of torture I can think of. Not to mention having her in a carseat is just much safer.

I also thought about booking two seats for myself, have her as a "lap infant" and then just put her in the other seat. I know that very large people or people with certain needs are able to book two seats for themselves. I can't see why I couldn't just do that. The only potential problem I can see there is that the airline will not let me bring the carseat on board, which would basically defeat the entire purpose of booking the extra seat because she will only be around 6 months old, so it's not like she can just sit in the extra seat without a carseat and hang out.

If all else fails, I can just book the seats I need and then hope that in December when she is born and has a birthdate I can find award availability for her on the same flight, not likely, or just take her as a lap infant and be miserable for 17 plus hours twice! Anyway, if anyone has any experience or advice, I would love to hear it! Thanks!
 

choochmac

New Member
That is a tricky one. This is what the Qantas website says (http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airlines/travelling-with-children-infants/global/en):

Seating
Travelling with your family is a great experience and we strive to seat families together whenever possible. You can select your seats together soon after you book with Advance Seat Selection, free on domestic flights and for selected travellers on international flights.

On domestic services, infants under the age of two can travel on their parent's tickets. For international services, infants must have their own ticket.

As bassinets are limited, please ensure that you request this at the time of booking. Bassinets on Qantas flights are approximately 71cm long, 31cm wide, 26cm deep, and have a weight limitation of 11 kg. If your infant is too large for the bassinet and is travelling on the parents ticket then they must be nursed.

If you are making a booking and your infant has not been born yet, just make the booking for your own travel at this time and once your baby is born contact your local Qantas office to add their name to the booking.

Child Safety Seat
Research demonstrates that the safety of your child will be enhanced with the use of a child seat. If you do plan to use a car seat you will need to reserve and purchase a separate seat and receive pre-approval for your device at least 24 hours before departure.

Contact your nearest Qantas Office for assistance with the pre-approval, you will also need to show the device to our airport staff on the day of your travel. You can also purchase a Child Aviation Restraint System (CARES) - CASA has pre-approved this harness style restraint device suitable for children aged two to four years. Find out more about the CARES system here. If you are planning on using a child restraint device on your Qantas flight, please see the check-in staff at the airport.


It sounds like you have to get a seat for the infant, put it in your name now and notify them. The tricky part is what you mentioned - getting the car seat pre approved.
 

asthejoeflies

Moderator
Staff member
The verbiage is interesting. I don't have experience with Qantas, but I will say that every airline says that an international infant in arms must have their own ticket - what they mean by that is you need to pay taxes and fees on the infant (or some kind of payment). When we booked our trip with United miles before our daughter was born, it was the same thing - we called after she was born, then they charged us and then they issued her the ticket. She was still an infant in arms, did not have her own seat, and her ticket did not cost as much as a full ticket. My GUESS is that it'd be the same for Qantas...curious as to what you find out though.
 

PedroNY

Level 2 Member
First of all, congratulations! You are entering a very exciting part of you life, enjoy the ride.

We booked tickets before our child was born. We had to call and add the child as a lap child. I understand that you want a separate seat for the child, I think you may either need to 1) book 2 seats in your name, 2) wait for the child to be born and then book it.

On a side note, depending on the age of your child, if he or she is under six weeks old, it is likely they will be sleeping 18+ hours a day. You may get lucky and the child will sleep most of the flight. In our case, our 6 hour coast-to-coast flight with a 10 week old baby = feeding on the way up, sleeping for 3 hours, feeding, sleeping for 2 hours, feeding on the way down. I do recognize we may have been very lucky. That being said, we didn't have an additional seat for the child.

Enjoy motherhood!!!!

Cheers,

PedroNY
 

Toni Perkins

Level 2 Member
First of all, congratulations! You are entering a very exciting part of you life, enjoy the ride.

We booked tickets before our child was born. We had to call and add the child as a lap child. I understand that you want a separate seat for the child, I think you may either need to 1) book 2 seats in your name, 2) wait for the child to be born and then book it.

On a side note, depending on the age of your child, if he or she is under six weeks old, it is likely they will be sleeping 18+ hours a day. You may get lucky and the child will sleep most of the flight. In our case, our 6 hour coast-to-coast flight with a 10 week old baby = feeding on the way up, sleeping for 3 hours, feeding, sleeping for 2 hours, feeding on the way down. I do recognize we may have been very lucky. That being said, we didn't have an additional seat for the child.

Enjoy motherhood!!!!

Cheers,

PedroNY
Pedro,

Thanks for the well wishes and information! She will actually be my 4th! Crazy, I know! Ha ha! My husband and my three boys are flying with us, as well, but they were all easy to book. So, no matter what, they are all getting to Australia some how. And she will be 6-7 months old by the time of the trip so I definitely think it's going to be a lot harder than if she were only a few weeks old. I LOVE traveling with tiny newborns. They are so easy! :)

When you booked your ticket, were they award tickets or did you guys pay for them? The problem is that ours are award tickets and according to AA, they can't change the ticket info once she is born because we are flying with Qantas even though we booked with AA. She isn't due until December, either, and I'm afraid that availability will be virtually gone by then. Maybe not, but it's a risk I can't really take.
 

Toni Perkins

Level 2 Member
The verbiage is interesting. I don't have experience with Qantas, but I will say that every airline says that an international infant in arms must have their own ticket - what they mean by that is you need to pay taxes and fees on the infant (or some kind of payment). When we booked our trip with United miles before our daughter was born, it was the same thing - we called after she was born, then they charged us and then they issued her the ticket. She was still an infant in arms, did not have her own seat, and her ticket did not cost as much as a full ticket. My GUESS is that it'd be the same for Qantas...curious as to what you find out though.
I will definitely keep you updated with what I find out. Hopefully I can get this all worked out and then let other people know since the information for this situation seems almost non existent. I would really prefer for her to have her own seat so I can take her carseat on with me and have a place to put her down every once and a while, but I will take what I can get too.
 

Toni Perkins

Level 2 Member
That is a tricky one. This is what the Qantas website says (http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airlines/travelling-with-children-infants/global/en):

Seating
Travelling with your family is a great experience and we strive to seat families together whenever possible. You can select your seats together soon after you book with Advance Seat Selection, free on domestic flights and for selected travellers on international flights.

On domestic services, infants under the age of two can travel on their parent's tickets. For international services, infants must have their own ticket.

As bassinets are limited, please ensure that you request this at the time of booking. Bassinets on Qantas flights are approximately 71cm long, 31cm wide, 26cm deep, and have a weight limitation of 11 kg. If your infant is too large for the bassinet and is travelling on the parents ticket then they must be nursed.

If you are making a booking and your infant has not been born yet, just make the booking for your own travel at this time and once your baby is born contact your local Qantas office to add their name to the booking.

Child Safety Seat
Research demonstrates that the safety of your child will be enhanced with the use of a child seat. If you do plan to use a car seat you will need to reserve and purchase a separate seat and receive pre-approval for your device at least 24 hours before departure.

Contact your nearest Qantas Office for assistance with the pre-approval, you will also need to show the device to our airport staff on the day of your travel. You can also purchase a Child Aviation Restraint System (CARES) - CASA has pre-approved this harness style restraint device suitable for children aged two to four years. Find out more about the CARES system here. If you are planning on using a child restraint device on your Qantas flight, please see the check-in staff at the airport.


It sounds like you have to get a seat for the infant, put it in your name now and notify them. The tricky part is what you mentioned - getting the car seat pre approved.
Thanks so much for posting this. It's super helpful. Everything is pretty crystal clear, until you consider that it's an award ticket. That's where it gets complicated. I'm hoping that the policy is the same, though. I guess we will see!
 

PedroNY

Level 2 Member
Pedro,

Thanks for the well wishes and information! She will actually be my 4th! Crazy, I know! Ha ha! My husband and my three boys are flying with us, as well, but they were all easy to book. So, no matter what, they are all getting to Australia some how. And she will be 6-7 months old by the time of the trip so I definitely think it's going to be a lot harder than if she were only a few weeks old. I LOVE traveling with tiny newborns. They are so easy! :)

When you booked your ticket, were they award tickets or did you guys pay for them? The problem is that ours are award tickets and according to AA, they can't change the ticket info once she is born because we are flying with Qantas even though we booked with AA. She isn't due until December, either, and I'm afraid that availability will be virtually gone by then. Maybe not, but it's a risk I can't really take.
4th on the way! 3 boys already! You are a saint, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise!

It was an award ticket, but it was domestic AA flight, so they just added a lap child later on. I really don't know how Qantas will handle it. Can you just call Qantas and talk to them? I imagine this happens, Australians are known for travel with newborns, so this must come up all the time...

Good luck,

PedroNY
 

StephenW

New Member
I have only had experience with Cathay and they booked the unborn child as "Baby <Last Name>" and the TBD birth date as the booking date. Our booking was as a lap child though and had to pay their exorbitant 25% fare. With that in mind my wife and I booked revenue tickets instead of searching for first/business award space. I agree with you that a lap child for a 17-hour flight seems a bit too long. Have you considered being seated at the bulkhead and putting your baby in a bassinet? At 6 months, they still travel quite well and sleep quite a bit. The Quantas bassinet looks quite comfortable and will save you the hassle of figuring out exactly how to book the award ticket for your child.
 

chuckin

New Member
I actually wrote a little post about this on my lame little fledgling blog. We specifically dealt with United for booking our seats but I would bet Qantas is similar. We could NOT book a seat for an unborn infant, they wouldn't have it, no calling back to change name, nothing, no go. We did figure out a work around, I booked myself an "extra seat," like you may do if you had a cello, or were physically too big for one seat and then booked two lap infants. The good news was we got an extra seat NOW with miles and didnt have to buy another one when the baby was born at whatever exorbitant rate.

There were a couple drawbacks to this for us, it ended up costing a little more, we had to pay the copay for the seat and also the lap-infant fee. Also since we technically, according to the computer, had two lap infants, the system would not allow us all to be in the same row due to the number of oxygen masks. Their system basically thinks the extra seat is a person and requires an oxygen mask and then wont allow the second lap infant in that row. But it was generally taken care of by the airline staff at the gate who were in general, extremely helpful.

http://traveling-twins.blogspot.com/
 

Toni Perkins

Level 2 Member
I actually wrote a little post about this on my lame little fledgling blog. We specifically dealt with United for booking our seats but I would bet Qantas is similar. We could NOT book a seat for an unborn infant, they wouldn't have it, no calling back to change name, nothing, no go. We did figure out a work around, I booked myself an "extra seat," like you may do if you had a cello, or were physically too big for one seat and then booked two lap infants. The good news was we got an extra seat NOW with miles and didnt have to buy another one when the baby was born at whatever exorbitant rate.

There were a couple drawbacks to this for us, it ended up costing a little more, we had to pay the copay for the seat and also the lap-infant fee. Also since we technically, according to the computer, had two lap infants, the system would not allow us all to be in the same row due to the number of oxygen masks. Their system basically thinks the extra seat is a person and requires an oxygen mask and then wont allow the second lap infant in that row. But it was generally taken care of by the airline staff at the gate who were in general, extremely helpful.

http://traveling-twins.blogspot.com/
This is awesome! Thank you soooo much for the help! I had a feeling this would be the case. I went ahead and booked an extra seat for myself, but was still worried on how that would end up. Do you have any idea if I can bring the car seat on board with me? I mean, like you said, you can technically book a seat for your cello or whatever the heck you want to bring, so I could just be really weird and want to bring an empty carseat on board with my for all they know, and then just stick my lap infant inside.
 

janetdoe

Level 2 Member
If you are trying to book Qantas flights with AA miles, possession is 9/10s of the law. AA can do a lot once you have the inventory locked down. So you made the right call to go ahead and book an extra seat for yourself. Now your worst case outcome will be adding the child as a lap child to your ticket.

I would suspect (but really have no reason except intuition) that the easiest/cheapest thing to do will be to pay the $150 redeposit fee and have the seat/ticket reissued in the baby's name once they are born. You might even get lucky and a nice agent will waive the fee for you. On some international tickets, the lap child fee will be something ridiculous, like 25% of the cost of a full paid ticket, so you always have to check if it will be cheaper to book them their own award ticket versus a lap child fee, even in 'normal' cases.

If you walk on the flight with an infant and a car seat, and you explain that you purchased a seat for the infant and have the right number of boarding passes, there should be zero nonsense/pushback about the car seat. The only caveat that I can think of is that they will want the car seat in a window seat so that no one is impeded from exiting the plane in an emergency. I have seen parents almost forced to check a car seat due to that restriction on a 100% full redeye where no one would give up their window seat. Eventually someone gave in and agreed to switch seats, but the mom was almost in tears, and the AA FAs said that they couldn't force anyone to trade seats.

You should google stories about QF restrictions on carseats in general to be sure there are no weird rules/restrictions for placement. Also, I'm sure you know there is a Family Travel forum on Flyertalk.
 
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