Anyone reading this blog closely might conclude that my hobby is criticising Qatar Airways (though anyone reading closely would also notice how often I try to fly with the Doha carrier, and would rightly conclude that a high frequency inevitably brings the odd mishap along with it). Today’s instalment concerns a fault on Qatar’s website, one that the call centre could not fix and that the wider internet was not much help with either, so your introverted blogger had to sort it out himself.
I attempted a joint check in for myself and my wife, on two tickets bought separately: first leg Fiumicino to Doha, second leg Doha to Haneda. The first check in went through without a hitch. The second returned an error. The message, verbatim, read “Our records show that the frequent flyer details belong to another passenger. Please ensure you enter the correct details to continue.” Translated: you have entered your Privilege Club number incorrectly. A pity, given that I had entered no number at all, since it is saved by default in the account settings, and given that if it had been wrong the first leg would never have gone through in the first place.
I called the call centre, already suspecting how it would go. A first conversation, then a handover to a “Privilege Club expert”. I explained that this could not possibly be a mistyped frequent flyer number, but the operator passed me on to the Privilege Club expert regardless. This person had me try again from the website, then from the app, then clear my cookies, as though the fault lay in my browser rather than in their servers. Half an hour later, unable to find a solution, I was advised to arrive at the departure airport well ahead of time and have my boarding pass issued there.
I did not trust this advice, and I was right not to. The problem was not a trivial one: if Doha could not issue the boarding pass and Fiumicino could not either, I would have had to clear immigration, leave the airport, and re-enter, eating substantially into my layover. I tried one last thing before resigning myself to the check in desk: checking in separately, first for myself, then for my wife. It worked. Boarding passes issued, no detour through an airport required.
It is not clear whether the bug is specific to joint check in on tickets with legs purchased at different times, or whether it is more general, but that is the circumstance in which it presented itself to me, and it is plausibly the common factor.
If the same error comes up for you: split the check in, do it individually. Problem fixed.
