If you’ve been around long enough in the miles and points space, you’ve probably had to at some point make the transition from solo travel to traveling with your partner. While booking another award seat with your partner is pretty easy, each airline has its own rules when it comes to booking a ticket for the newest member of your family. Last year, I wrote about how Air Canada made it really easy by allowing lap infant bookings for award tickets on their website. For my upcoming trip, I was looking to book a lap infant award ticket for my daughter by using Singapore Airlines miles.
Lap Infant Award ticket booking basics
I was looking to book a flight from Mumbai to Singapore for next month as my plan was to use a Singapore stopover to spend some time there and then catch another flight to the US. I checked saver availability in business class and found that seats were available for my dates of travel. Thanks to the Singapore escapes promo, the price of one business class ticket was just 30,100 Singapore Airlines miles.
Here are the sequential steps I followed to make a lap infant award seat booking for my daugther:
- I confirmed availability for two adults in business for my choice of flight
- I then booked two seats online after transferring my Amex points to Singapore Airlines (points transferred instantly)
- In a few minutes, I got an email from Singapore Airlines with a confirmed ticket
The next step was to call Singapore Airlines to add my daughter as a lap infant to my award ticket.
- I called the Singapore Airlines customer care center in the US
- After confirming the details of our booking, the rep asked me for my daughter’s passport details
- She then confirmed that I’ll need to pay 10% of the cash fare of the ticket for my daughter’s ticket
- She then transferred me to a phone based payment system to key in my card details
- I entered my card details and paid $70
The Pundit’s Mantra
Overall, the phone call took close to 15 minutes as the rep encountered a few errors initially. However, the process was pretty straightforward.
For a $700 ticket, using 30,100 Singapore Airlines Miles was a pretty sweet deal. If you plan to fly Singapore Airlines soon, then I’d recommend checking out their Spontaneous Escapes page.
Booking a lap infant award ticket can be confusing at times. This is primarily due to the fact that each airline has its own policy. In my experience, booking a lap infant award ticket with Singapore Airlines was pretty smooth.
In your opinion, which airline has the easiest process to book a lap infant award ticket? Tell us in the comments section.
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Did you face any issue with the infant name showing up in the ticket ?
The support executive tried booking a seat for my infant. The fare was 10% of the adult fee. But the name of the infant is a problem, They couldn’t book a ticket on my infant’s First + Last name due to character limitations (19 Characters Max). As per SA the infant’s and the second adult’s first name can have a max of 19 characters. So the must change (put initials instead of names) the first name of the second adult ticket to initials and my infant’s name to all initials.
Wouldn’t this be a problem during visa process when I apply for a Schengen visa and later during clearing immigration and while boarding ? I’m planning a trip to Europe.
I didn’t run into that issue. When I called SIA they simply asked me to spell out my daughter’s first and last name as per her passport. Since it was probably under that 19 character max you mentioned, I probably didn’t run into that issue.
Just an FYI. I’ve run into a different issue while booking a lap infant ticket on Air Canada’s website. The website allows me to enter all the fields but only displays the first two letters on the booking confirmation.
On bookings made with Aeroplan miles, my daughter’s name shows up as Aa, I have to call them and make sure they see the full name on their systems. 🙂 The agent told me it’s just a glitch on the website and that they see the full name on their systems.
I love to share my one personal anecdote every chance I get. I got in on the RGN F mistake fare a few years ago on SQ Suites. There was availability for 4 F tickets on the day I wanted to travel, but we were a party of 5 (including one infant). I booked the 4 F tickets for $283 each. Called SQ to add my infant and it was over $1,500. The cost of one lap infant without seat was more than 4 SQ Suites tickets.
Wow, that’s just insanely expensive!