What to Check Before Booking a New Flight

The six checks

None of them take long, and each of them has caused someone a very bad day.

• The airport code, not just the city, especially in London, Paris, Milan and Istanbul
• The date, particularly for flights after midnight
• Baggage allowance, including cabin bag dimensions
• Total travel time, not just departure time
• Whether the connection is on one ticket or two
• The change and cancellation terms of this specific fare

Names have to match

The name on the ticket must match the passport. Middle names are usually forgiving, misspelled surnames are not, and corrections cost money.

Airport codes cause more silent errors than any other item on this list, because two similarly named airports can serve completely different sides of a region. London alone has six, and booking the wrong one can add a two hour transfer to what looked like a short trip. Before paying, search the airport code itself rather than the city name, and confirm it against the country and terminal shown on the booking summary, since autocomplete tools sometimes suggest the wrong one first simply because it is more commonly searched.

A mismatch is most likely to happen when someone else books on your behalf, using a nickname or an old surname from a saved payment profile rather than checking the passport directly. Before confirming any booking made by a partner, parent or travel agent, read the name field back against the passport photo page yourself rather than trusting that it has been copied correctly. Fixing a misspelled surname after payment usually means a fee and, on some fares, a call to the airline rather than a simple online edit.

It helps to run these six in a fixed order rather than jumping between them, since some checks make others unnecessary. Confirm the airport code first, because a wrong airport can invalidate everything checked afterward. Then the date, since flights after midnight are easy to misbook a day early or late. Baggage allowance and total travel time come next, followed by the ticketing structure of any connection, and finally the fare rules. Doing them in this order takes under a minute once it becomes a habit, and it catches the errors that cause the most expensive problems before the smaller ones.

Pay in the local currency

If a payment page offers to charge you in your home currency, decline. The exchange rate applied is almost always worse than your bank's.

Booking sites often default to the fastest sounding option, but total travel time hides a lot. A short flight followed by a three hour layover can lose to a slightly longer direct route, and the cheapest fare on the page is not always the cheapest once a missed connection or an extra night is factored in. Compare the full door to door time before assuming the top result is the best one.

It is also worth reading who you are actually booking with. Many search results are sold through a third party agent rather than the airline directly, and changes or refunds then go through that agent's own process, which can be slower and less flexible than dealing with the airline. If a fare looks unusually cheap, check who issues the ticket before paying.

Booking under time pressure

Rebooking a cancelled or delayed flight is the moment most of the six checks get skipped, because the priority is simply getting a new flight before the good options disappear. Slow down for exactly the amount of time it takes to confirm airport, date and baggage allowance, even when a queue or a countdown timer is pushing you to hurry.

If you are booking from a phone rather than a laptop, be extra careful with dates and airport codes, since small screens make these easier to misread. Where possible, take a screenshot of the booking summary before confirming payment, so you have a record of exactly what you agreed to if anything about the booking looks different afterwards.

A common mistake under pressure is comparing only the price and the departure time, then paying without checking whether the fare is refundable or changeable at all. Disrupted travellers are more likely than most to need a further change if plans shift again, yet this is exactly when people skip the fare rules to save thirty seconds. If two similar options are available, the slightly more expensive one with a free change is usually the better choice when you are already dealing with one disruption, since a second problem is more likely than usual on a day that has already gone wrong once.