Allegiant Name Change and Correction Policy: What Is Allowed

Timing changes the difficulty far more than the policy

Married, divorced and legally changed names

• Book in the name on the ID you will actually present. If the licence still shows your former name, that is the name to travel in.
• If the ID has been updated, the ticket should match it.
• If the change happens after booking, that is a correction, and you will usually need the marriage certificate, divorce decree or court order.
• Allegiant bookings are often made far ahead for a summer trip or a family event, which makes this scenario more common here than on an airline people book six weeks out. Update the document first, then the ticket.

Names that do not fit the boxes

• Two surnames, as in many Hispanic naming conventions — if both appear as surnames on the ID, both belong in the surname field.
• Hyphenated surnames, entered exactly as printed, hyphen included.
• Suffixes — Jr, Sr, II, III — placed wherever the ID places them.
• Names longer than the field allows. There is a convention for this; it is better applied at booking than corrected afterwards.
• Children travelling on a parent's booking, whose names are frequently typed from memory rather than copied from a document.

Checking the name before you ever need this page

Open the confirmation the day it arrives, put the ID next to it and compare the surname, the given names in the order the document shows them, any middle name, and the spelling letter by letter.

Do it for every person on the booking, not just yourself. On a family or group record the names were usually typed in one sitting, and where one is wrong the others often are too. On a four-times-a-week route that thirty-second check is worth more than it looks.

What to do if the name is wrong now

1. Get the ID in front of you — the document, not your memory of it.
2. Write down the exact difference.
3. Decide: correction or transfer?
4. Call rather than email. A phone agent can see and amend the record while you are on the line.
5. Have documentation ready if the name changed legally.
6. Check the flight frequency on your route so you know what a worst case actually looks like, and act accordingly.

What it actually costs to leave it

• You may not be able to check in. The agent cannot issue a boarding pass against an ID that does not match the record.
• The desk is the hardest place to fix it, with a live departure in progress and limited authority to amend records.
• On a thin route the next departure may be days away, not hours.
• A missed flight on a low fare is generally treated as a no-show, and the value is lost.
• Your travelling companions will usually go without you, which on a family trip is the part nobody plans for.

Who can make the change, and why that slows things down

A detail that costs people time: the change generally has to be made by whoever holds the booking.

• If you booked directly, you deal with the airline yourself.
• If a travel agent booked it, go back to them. They can usually act faster than you can on a public line, and they already have the record open.
• If a relative booked for the family, they may need to be the one on the call, which is awkward when the trip is tomorrow and they are at work.
• If it came through a third-party booking site, that site normally sits between you and the airline, which adds a step and sometimes a day.

Work out who holds the booking before you start, rather than discovering it after twenty minutes on hold. And if you are booking for a family or a group, consider being the one person who holds every record — it is far easier to fix six names from one account than to chase six people who each booked their own.

What the airline will ask you for

Having these to hand shortens the call considerably:

• The booking reference or confirmation number
• The ID you will travel with, in front of you, open at the photo page
• The exact spelling you need, read letter by letter rather than said aloud
• Date of birth as it appears on the document
• Documentation if the name changed legally — marriage certificate, divorce decree or court order
• The card used for the booking, if payment comes into it

Reading a name letter by letter sounds excessive until you have heard an agent write down what they thought you said. It is the single most useful habit on this kind of call.

How Fond Travels can help

• We tell you which problem you have. Correction or transfer decides everything that follows.
• We make the call rather than leaving you on hold, and we confirm the change has gone through.
• We check names against IDs at the time of booking, which is when this costs nothing to prevent.
• We tell you what the schedule actually looks like on your route, so you know whether a problem means hours or days.
• We compare correcting against rebooking where both are possible, including what the fare rules would cost you.

If a name does not match the ID, call +1 (323) 800 6001. A travel expert answers any hour, and on a route with few departures the earlier this is handled the better.