There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t learn something about some aspect of the travel industry. Today’s lesson is niche, but quite interesting, if you ask me.
Air India won’t accept last name “Sample” on bookings
On a recent post, an OMAAT reader left the following comment, which got me curious:
I tried booking a flight on Air India and no one can ticket it because their system is hard coded to not accept SAMPLE as a surname. Have you ever heard of anything like that? Tried 1st partying booking, call center, OTAs, all rejected the ticket and either failed completely (Amex Travel) or dropped me and only ticketed my wife.
I wondered if this was really true, so I tried to recreate it.
Sure enough, when I entered a name that had the last name “Sample,” I got an error message on the next page, indicating that something went wrong.
Is this a common limitation with airlines?
This is sort of fascinating. I can kind of see how something like this would happen. Airlines might sometimes display “Sample” as a sample name, and I would assume they want to make sure no one accidentally books a ticket with that name, or something.
However, there are people out there with that last name, so it’s kind of wild that the system fully blocks that name, with seemingly no good way to override it.
One wonders, is this issue exclusive to Air India, is this an issue across Amadeus, and/or do other airlines have a similar issue? I’d assume based on the fact that a reader with the last name Sample specifically called out Air India suggests this is the exception rather than the norm.
Bottom line
Apparently Air India won’t accept bookings from passengers with the last name “Sample.” I suppose the airline is concerned that people accidentally use that last name, for whatever reason. However, that also prevents those with that last name from booking tickets on the airline.
I’m curious if this is a specific Air India restriction, or if there’s a bigger reservations system block in place for this.
What do you make of Air India not wanting “Sample” passengers?