"VS" wrote in message
news:h1n6ui$nen$1@xenon.Stanford.EDU...
> In article ,
> Graham Harrison wrote:
>
>>>BA still requires this, although enforcement is sporadic.
>>
>>Not true.
>
> Cut-and-pasted from the confirmation email for a BA e-ticket I bought
> for someone else (dated Nov 25, 2008):
>
> ``Please remember you must bring the card used to pay for this booking
> to the airport with you, for verification, before you can travel.''
>
>>It is their preferred method but I've bought ET for other
>>passengers on BA and they have travelled quite successfully despite not
>>having a copy of my card.
>
> In my experience, enforcement is sporadic. I've never seen this
> enforced anywhere except London (doesn't mean this can't happen), but
> at LGW, I was asked to show the card I used for payment as recently
> as 2007.
>
Don't care what it says. Badly worded. The IATA standards allow for
various forms of identification to be presented. There are, without doubt,
fraud issues associated with credit cards that mean that, when possible, all
airlines like to see the card. However, they are well aware that
passengers buy tickets for one another and they know which card has been
used for payment *and* who the cardholder is so that they do *not* ask for
the card from someone who is not the cardholder.
In the very early days of ET I bought a ticket from BA for someone to travel
from Baltimore to London and back (I'm in London). The question of
producing the card did arise but once BA realised that the cardholder was in
the UK and the passenger in the USA all was OK. On subsequent trips there
was no problem. Equally, on my first ET trip I presented myself at Gatwick
to BA who looked slight disconcerted when I announced I had an ET and made
no attempt to produce any paper at all or my card (other than my passport
because I was going to Denver) but the check in person took a deep breath
and processed me no problem.
This thing of buying a ticket for someone else has been around for years
and, in the same vein, the ticket (with a few exceptions related to currency
regulations) can start and end anywhere in the world. I've purchased
tickets for other people from New York to Milan and Stockholm to Geneva to
name but two and they've never come anywhere near the UK, much less London.
It's a non issue. It's totally doable.
|