Travel question: Can I fly solo if my ‘partner’ can’t make the flight?

Q You wrote about potential problems if someone books a trip but doesn’t fly all the legs. Is there a problem if two people book a flight together and only one flies?

David C

A Almost always not. It is fairly common for two people to be booked on the same flight (and have the same reservation code, known as the PNR) but for only one of them to travel. That might be because of unexpected work commitments, illness or the breakdown of the relationship. The legal position applied by the airline to the missing person is usually: “You are a no-show and we are keeping all your money, as we warned you.”

The only possible situation where the airline might take a different view is when selling tickets on the basis that two people will travel together. Almost exclusively these are for long-haul business-class flights. The “couple” stipulation is to prevent business travellers who are flying solo from availing of deep discounts. Emirates, Malaysia Airlines and Qatar Airways have all sold two-together tickets for business-class trips to Australia. In theory, if only one person shows up the booking could be voided. But as they tend to be billed as “two for the price of one” the airline may not care that only one turns up, not two.

Generally I advise passengers who cannot travel to make every effort to cancel, to give the airline the chance to resell the seat. While that revenue probably won’t make its way to the passenger, at least it allows someone else to travel. And it may possibly make a difference in reclaiming some of the taxes, fees and charges. But for the most recent case in which three of us were flying on easyJet from Gatwick to Malta and back, and one was a no-show, we checked in the absent Julian so we would have a middle seat empty.

However, for anyone thinking of travelling with an imaginary friend in the hope of using their baggage allowance, I have found no case in which an airline will allow that. Finally, if the second ticket is especially high value, then it could conceivably be worth someone of the right gender obtaining a new passport in the name on the ticket to avoid wasting it.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder