Recently, I tried to add a lap infant to an award ticket and nearly got gouged by American Airlines for nearly 3x what the ticket should have cost. The experience led me to three key finds for those who travel with lap infants. While these finds come late in the game for me (as my son is quickly approaching his second birthday), hopefully they can help other parents planning infant award travel.
The Dilemma: Adding a lap infant to a Cathay Pacific Award booked with American Airlines miles
On the way home from the 40K to Far Away challenge, I flew China Airlines business class from Auckland to Brisbane. After two nights in Brisbane, I flew Singapore Airlines business class to Singapore. Then, after two nights in Singapore, it was Cathay Pacific business class the rest of the way home (from Singapore to Hong Kong to Newark).
We had 4 adults in our group (me, my wife, her sister, and her sister’s husband) plus my son (21 months old). The best deal for business class from Singapore to New York (and really one of the best deals in business class travel) is using Alaska Mileage Plan to fly on Cathay Pacific. Business class was just 50K miles per person one-way plus $94.83 in taxes. That’s a great deal.
In 99% of cases, when you book an award ticket, you are subject to the ticketing carrier’s lap infant policy / pricing. For example, if you use your Air Canada Aeroplan miles to book an award ticket for travel in business class on United between New York and Paris, you pay Air Canada’s lap infant price (which is $100 or 10K miles in business class). If you use Asiana miles to book the same flight on United, you pay Asiana’s lap infant price (which is 10% of the miles price for the adult ticket — in this case, 4,000 miles). If you use United Mileage Plus miles to book the same flight, you pay United’s lap infant price (which is 10% of the revenue fare — which is likely to be several hundred dollars). Again, you pay the ticketing carrier’s price regardless of the operating carrier. Conventional wisdom tells us that the operating carrier generally will not help with any changes (like adding a lap infant) when the ticket is on another airline’s ticket stock (i.e. booked with another airline’s miles).
It’s worth noting that adding a lap infant on a domestic trip is a different story. That’s free within the US and you can generally do it at the airport with the operating carrier no matter whose miles you used to book the ticket (though it’s not always simple: At the airport, I’ve added my son as a lap infant on domestic United flights booked with both Avianca LifeMiles and Turkish Miles & Smiles and each time it has taken the agents several extra minutes and often a call to a supervisor to do it. I’ve tried and failed to add a lap infant to those bookings ahead of time online / via the call center / via Twitter; United won’t do it in advance since they were not the ticketing airline. I’ve had the same problem trying to add my son as a lap infant on a domestic Delta ticket booked through Virgin Atlantic — easily done at the airport, but Delta refused to do it in advance because it was ticketed via Virgin Atlantic.).
But internationally, you normally need to go through the ticketing carrier and you do not want to wait until you arrive at the airport.
Alaska Mileage Plan, however, has long been an exception to this rule: Alaska has long been unable to add a lap infant to partner awards. Alaska is the one exception where you would contact and pay the operating carrier’s lap infant fee. Historically, one has been able to contact the operating carrier for an Alaska Mileage Plan award and add a lap infant directly with the operating carrier subject to that carrier’s fees. However, there were two reasons I was concerned that wouldn’t be a viable option this time: First, Alaska’s site currently has a notice advising that they can not guarantee that lap infants can be added to international partner awards:
That made me think that perhaps it couldn’t be done at all. Second, I’d previously read that Cathay Pacific would charge 25% of the adult fare for a lap infant on flights to/from the US. As the adult fare for my trip was $3337 one way, I wasn’t excited about the prospect of paying $800+ for a lap infant ticket.
Therefore, I booked 3 adults using Alaska Mileage Plan and I booked myself a ticket through American Airlines AAdvantage. American charges 70K miles for the same business class itinerary versus Alaska’s 50K; however, American only charges 10% of the adult revenue fare for a lap infant. As noted in the previous paragraph, if it were even possible to book with Alaska and add my son by calling Cathay Pacific, I expected his lap infant ticket to cost north of $800. I expected adding a lap infant with American to cost 10% of the $3337 fare — just over $330. I therefore figured I would save about $500 in lap infant fees by booking with AA miles and adding the lap infant through AA than if I booked with Alaska miles and added the lap infant with Cathay Pacific directly (which, per the screen shot message above, I thought may not be possible anyway).
However, I think I probably made a mistake in booking with American Airlines AAdvantage. Read on for my 3 findings that explain why.
Find #1: American Airlines might way overcharge you to add a lap infant
I booked my ticket via American Airlines AAdvantage. As soon as the award ticketed, I called American Airlines to add my son as a lap infant. When the agent looked up my itinerary, he commented about how he expected this would be really expensive since my itinerary was one-way international business class. He went on about how pricey one-way international business class can be (something that obviously isn’t a surprise to me, but I’m sure probably does surprise some customers) and how I should always book international fares round trip, etc. I didn’t think much of it because I already knew the adult fare was $3337 and so I was prepared to pay something around $330 for the lap infant ticket.
While ~$330 is not a small amount of money, it doesn’t seem ridiculous when you consider that we’d be spending about 20 hours in Cathay Pacific business class (4hrs from Singapore to Hong Kong followed by the 16hr flight from Hong Kong to Newark plus several hours in the lounges in Hong Kong in between).
However, when the agent came back, he asked if I was sitting down. I thought he was being overly dramatic until he told me it would cost $1,140 for the lap infant ticket. I must have spit out my beverage. I told him that had to be a mistake — at which point he went back to lecturing me about how expensive one-way business class tickets are. I tried to politely tell him that I’ve done this a few times before and I know how much tickets cost but that the fee he was quoting must be based on a first class fare. I told him that the current cash price for my itinerary in business class was $3337. He then told me that Google Flights must be showing a discounted fare, but that American has to charge me 10% of a full J-fare (for those unaware, airlines have many different fare classes — there are different fare buckets for business class, with “J” being the highest business class fare for the route).
I’ve booked my son as a lap infant a number of times now and hadn’t ever been told that the lap infant fare had to be based on a full-fare (i.e. most expensive price) business class ticket. Furthermore, eleven hundred dollars didn’t sound like ten percent of any business class fare I’ve seen on Cathay from Asia to the US. I asked him if he could hold on a second while I checked and he was happy to do so. I then went to ITA Matrix and saw that he was correct that the $3337 fare was indeed a discounted “I” fare class:
However, ITA Matrix allows you to specify fare classes when searching fares (something I wrote about recently). I was therefore able to check and see that the “J” fare on this route was about $6,245.63.
That’s the full-fare (un-discounted) business class price for the route, so $1,140 for a lap infant made no sense at all. I went back to the agent with that info. He agreed to go back to the ticket desk and have them double-check the fare. He came back a few minutes later to say that the full fare that American Airlines had for the route was $9,800 and that with the associated taxes it came to $1,140 for the lap infant and that’s what American would have to charge me. That made absolutely no sense to me as I couldn’t find a fare like that on any date for my route. However, the agent told me that the ticket desk had suggested that I could contact Cathay Pacific directly and they could probably do it for less. I was almost certain that Cathay would tell me to pound sand since this ticket was booked on American Airlines ticket stock, but I wasn’t getting anywhere with this agent, so I thanked him and ended the call.
Before I go any further, let me reiterate something I’ve said before: Always arm yourself with information before you call and never take one customer service agent’s word as definitive. They are often wrong. Thank goodness I know enough about award travel to know that $1,140 was not a correct price. I wonder how many people just get ripped off and pay what the agent says.
Anyway, this call led to Find #2.
Find #2: ITA Matrix shows lap infant fees
This find came courtesy of a Facebook group to which I belong. Not wanting to tip off Greg and Stephen as to my flights home from the 40K challenge (therefore giving them an idea as to where I’d be flying from), I didn’t post this one in our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group, though that’s generally where I’d go with an award travel question like this.
I asked members of a different group about whether they’d booked a lap infant on an international business class award with American Airlines and if they knew whether or not they had been charged based on the lowest available fare (i.e. the $3337 fare in this case) or a full-fare (J-class) business class fare.
In the ensuing discussion, someone alerted me to the fact that when using ITA Matrix, you can add a lap infant to your search and see exactly how much a lap infant fare would be.
In order to do so, just hit the link that says “children” next to the number of adults.
Then choose “infants in lap”. I had no idea this option existed.
Then, when you choose a particular flight / fare, it will show the lap infant fee in the fare details:
As you can see, the lap infant fee should be $471.43 based on the cheapest available business class fare ($3337). That’s a bit more than the $330 or so I was expecting, but it was nearly 60% less than what AA was trying to charge me.
I can’t believe I hadn’t known that ITA Matrix had this feature: this would have been very useful in award travel planning stages. I’ve previously wasted time calling for a quote whereas I can now get an idea as to what to expect thanks to ITA Matrix.
For those curious, the lap infant fee on a J-fare ticket (the full, un-discounted business class fare), would have been $761.43 according to ITA Matrix. That was still far below what American was trying to charge me.
Armed with that information, I made my call for find #3.
Find #3: Cathay Pacific can add a lap infant to an award booked with American Airlines miles
In the Facebook discussion referenced above, it was suggested that I contact Cathay Pacific. Having received the same suggestion from American Airlines, that’s what I decided to do. Working on this late at night (after the US-based call center was closed), I called Cathay’s Hong Kong call center directly. This cost just a few cents per minute via Google Voice (and I was able to use my cell phone via the Google Hangouts Dialer).
I explained to the call center agent that I wanted to add a lap infant and provided my booking reference number. After a brief hold, the agent came back with a price of 3693 Hong Kong dollars, which Google told me was exactly $471 and some change — within a few pennies of what I expected based on ITA Matrix. The agent did not mention the ticket being booked through American Airlines at any point but rather made it quick and simple to add the lap infant and pay for it over the phone. The entire call, start to finish, was less than ten minutes and it saved me almost seven hundred dollars over what American wanted to charge me.
In the end, it got even better. On both the flights from Singapore to Hong Kong and from Hong Kong to Newark, Cathay has business class split into a larger “front” cabin and a small “mini-cabin” between the main business class cabin and premium economy. I booked our seats in the mini-cabin on both flights. On the Hong Kong-to-Newark flight, the mini cabin only has two rows in a 1-2-1 configuration. My family therefore had 4 of the 8 seats in the cabin (since my wife and I were traveling with her sister and sister’s husband). In a stroke of luck, the mini cabin had 2 empty seats! There was an empty seat across from us, so our son was able to sleep in his own seat for most of the flight. That was well worth the $470 price tag.
Related experience
Someone else in the Facebook discussion above had a slightly different but entirely relevant experience: he had also tried to add a lap infant to an AA award ticket on Cathay Pacific. Unlike my experience, he had been quoted something like the $470 price by American Airlines and paid that price over the phone. However, a day or two later, American Airlines called him saying that they made a mistake and the correct fee should be something around $1100 and basically demanded that he call back to pay the balance or the lap infant ticket would be canceled. I believe he ended up booking the lap infant through Cathay Pacific also. Since his lap infant was already ticketed, I’m sure he may have had a DOT complaint with American Airlines if they actually canceled it, but I imagine he probably determined that it was easier to just ticket via Cathay and be done with it.
I’m not sure why American was looking for such an exorbitant lap infant fee in either case. Despite some effort, I couldn’t figure out where they were sourcing the fare upon which to base the lap infant fee. However, I now know how to find the correct fare and what to do in the future if I were quoted a higher-than-expected price.
Bottom line
I’ve noted before that it pays to do your research before you get on the phone so you can know what to expect and I’ve further advised not to take one agent’s word for it when their information doesn’t match yours. An additional takeaway this time is that if you’ll be adding a lap infant to an award ticket, it would be wise to call and add your lap infant right away. I’ve often waited and added my son weeks or even months later. While that has been fine in most instances, in this case, I’m glad I called right away. Had I waited weeks to add him to the ticket I may have ended up with a nasty surprise if American Airlines continued to demand $1140 for a lap infant ticket and Cathay hadn’t been willing to help. I’d rather get that kind of surprise while still within the free 24hr cancellation period as there is no way I’d want to pay that kind of exorbitant fee. All that said, in hindsight, I still probably made a mistake: if Cathay was able to add my son to my American Airlines ticket, I feel reasonably confident that they probably could have added it to my Alaska Mileage Plan ticket and I probably could have saved a few miles. At the end of the day, I won’t lose sleep over that since I did get the correct lap infant price, which was much less than American told me.
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Just added lap infant to two flights, the international portion is on air tahiti nui, the AA rep was able to add the infrant, I see that on the reservation now. But wasn’t able to give me a qoute on the fee for the lap infant, nor were they able to take the payment. Instead they asked me to contact air tahti to pay it or at the airport. This seems new or is it different by partner?
Hi Nick. I have two one way business class award flights booked on Etihad in November. I’m trying to add a lap infant and AA wants over $3,000 on one flight and over $1,500 on the other. The going rate of both flights are about $5,000 for business class. I’ve used ITA matrix like your articles states. How is AA not getting the pricing correct if infant lap seat is ~10% or fare? Please help!
Krisflyer agent told me for Award ticket it is the same number of miles for a lap child. That 10% is only for purchased ticket. They said this is the way it has always been. Did I get a confused rep?
Yes, you did get an incorrect rep. I’ve done it myself on a Singapore ticket. If you use something like Google Voice, it is very cheap to call internationally. I’d recommend calling one of the Singapore customer service lines. You’ll still get an English-speaking rep and they may be more likely to know how to do it properly. That said, most Singapore agents are quite good, so calling the US customer service phone number again might do the trick.
One time I wrote a post about calling Virgin Atlantic six times to price out a lap infant award ticket and literally getting 6 different answers about how much it should cost. It’s just not something that reps do all the time, so it isn’t entirely uncommon to get one who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Usually best to HUCA (hang up, call again).
I have called into the US Singapore number 3 times. Always different answer. 3rd time they said they would research and call me back. That rep called back and told me they could not book lap child, since award flight is entirely on United, that I need to call United. In communication now with United for over an hour, they say Singapore needs to do it, but they (United) are trying to do it.
Is your flight entirely in the US? If yes, the lap infant is free. Just add them when you get to the airport. Show up early because it sometimes takes the check in agent a while to figure out how to do it, but they eventually get it figured out.
If it’s international, I recommend using Google Voice or Skype and calling Singapore then.
No, it is US to Panama City, Panama.
Yup, I am going to need to call in, unless United actually got this done. Which the rep said she did.
This is a silly question but how do you know if the on lap infant has been ticketed properly? I called CX to add an infant on lap to my AS reward booking and the rep added it with no charges…. I checked my booking on CXs website and see my child’s name underneath mine wit (on lap) beside it, has she been ticketed?
Thanks!
I believe you should see a ticket number next to the child’s name (though I can’t recall exactly what it looked like on the CX site). Is there an option to print your receipt on the CX site? That should have ticket numbers.
After I added my son, I received an email from CX with his ticket number.
Thank you for this! Turns out they didn’t actually add her as a passenger but a “service note” on our reservation….they said they cant add her as a passenger and told me to called AS back. AS also said they can’t add infant but can only pay full rewards for another ticket. Sigh.
What office did you call for CX? I called Hong Kong. I don’t know if that made a difference, but calling a foreign office sometimes means better service. International calls are pretty cheap through Google Voice. I’d HUCA at least once or twice on adding the lap infant ticket via CX.
When is your trip? While it is true that AS has not been able to add a lap infant to a partner award, I wonder if that might change whenever they actually commence oneworld bookings. Supposedly that feature is coming during Summer 2021, which is obviously in full swing at this point so I am expecting Alaska to make an announcement on that front sooner rather than later (no inside info, just my expectation based on their previous statements). If your trip isn’t until later this year or next year and the Hong Kong or other foreign CX office isn’t able to help, maybe wait it out to see if AS will gain lap infant booking capability on partner awards when oneworld booking goes live. I think there is at least a decent chance it’ll become possible.
I called the Canada office but thank you for the tip! I’ll try calling HK and see if they say anything different. What the AS agent told me was that back in 2019 CX decided to stop adding infant fare to reward flights because it was too difficult to price? My booking is for April 2022 so maybe I’ll wait it out for AS to add that capability… it’ll be nice if they are able to accept 25% in rewards vs cash.
Thanks so much for this incredibly enlightening article. I’m hoping to book an award flight through Alaska on JAL in October 2022. I’m crossing my fingers that this policy is outdated and now that the oneworld merger is live, they will have this capability in the coming months. Too far in advance to book my flight anyhow, but I’m growing nervous and worry that if I call JAL now before I book my flight they’ll only be able to give me hypotheticals. I feel like I’d want confirmation that at the very least they’d let me pay any price for a lap infant, even if it’s 25%. Just don’t want to pay an adult fare like Alaska says you have to.
Same thing happened to me on Singapore Award ticket on United metal. Singapore said they couldn’t ticket a lap child and I had to call United. I called United, they added the child and also told me no charge. I questioned her about it and she said no there is no charge. She went on about a credit card speal, then I questioned her again, saying I believe there should be a charge. She said, let me check with our rate department. She transferred me to someone else who said, all that happened was her name was added to the record, but no ticket for her.
This rep had to connect to different department, charged me the rate and said I would receive an email in 10 minutes. Nothing has come through as of yet.
I am having the hardest time booking lap infant for our United award ticket operated by Air Canada and TAP Portugal. I have spent 5+ hours with 5 different United agents who have been sharing completely different information about adding infants.
First agent who booked our award ticket claimed $200 he collected includes all fees and taxes including infant fee for our multi destination international business class tickets for two adults which costed 330,000 miles. Second agent claimed United cannot add lap infant and only operating carriers can add the infant. Third agent collected $400+ infant fee, shared another confirmation code for the infant and assured that infant ticket will be ticketed within 24-48 hours. The confirmation code shared by third agent has been retrieves – “Your purchase is confirmed and your reservation is processing. We’ll email you when your reservation has been ticketed”
Fourth agent escalated to further support and assured that infant reservation will be ticketed within 1-2 hours from the call.
Fifth agent informed that lap infant ticket can only be ticketed 24 hours before departure date, and stated previous agents were incorrect.
I’m exhausted from talking with United agents who have not been able to give consistent answers. Do you know what the actual policy/process of adding lap infant to United ticket operated by partners is?
It should be 10% of the adult revenue fare, but that likely does get complex when you are mixing partners. Have you tried Tweeting at United? Their Twitter team is responsive and relatively helpful and may be your best bet.
It’s frustrating that agents don’t all receive the same training and make up various answers. That last one that said it can only be ticketed 24 hours before departure is definitely wrong, and in a case where United’s fee should be 10% of the adult revenue fare, it could be very expensive bad advice. That said, I imagine there is some level of complexity in adding a lap infant to a mixed partner award that may require follow-up with the department that pushes tickets through the queue when they get stuck in the process. I think the Twitter team is your next stop.
Thanks Nick!
Unfortunately United Twitter team is also very unhelpful… Their response –
“We appreciate your patience and after standard checks, we found that the infant’s ticket has to be issued by the operating carriers. The TAP flights should be issued by TAP Portugal then AC flights should be issued by Air Canada.”
I wish there was another way to escalate this to a department within United that actually knows what they are talking about! 🙁
Very timely post. I was quoted nearly the same for a flight I recently booked for next year on CX using AA miles. Rather than shell out the $1,100, I figured it would be more useful to get our child their own seat using miles since availability was there on all routes, especially on a 16+ hour trip. I didn’t know about the ITA matrix’s option for lap children either so I will definitely be using it in the future.
Great Read!
Nick
Kevin from NYC sent me 2 membership cards not one which came today and are good for 2 years . If u need a membership card when ur membership runs out send me ur address and I’ll send u one . I will be there in January ..
CHEERs
I just had this same issue with UA. I booked myself MP ticker on Air China IAH>SIN retailed R/T $2300 deep discount. UA wanted to charge me 10% of Full Flex Business class price for my son’s in lap ticket which was ~$850. I ended up getting it for $241 through emailing Air China directly.
The reason AA charges so much is because CX’s rule used to be 25% for flights to/from US, and I don’t think they’ve updated their system to reflect that. I believe that only changed in the past year. What’s weird is that I’ve ticketed CX lap infants before with my first child about 6 years ago, and remember AA to be in the 10% ball park. Also, I had a very similar experience to share, I booked an AA ticket on AS-CX because I thought that AA would only charge 10% for lap infant. However, AA couldn’t even ticket my lap infant ticket because AS was part of the ticket and them having that stupid rule about not ticketing infants on international awards. Luckily, same as you, I was able to call CX directly to book the international segment. Haven’t added the domestic AS segment for the lap infant though.
Also, I got in on the RGN F fare a few years back for my family in SQ suites. 4 adults paid $1183, one lap infant was over $1500. I got in the mistake fare too late and there were only 4 seats left on the dates that I wanted
Back in 2015 I purchased several lap infant tickets attached to AA awards. CX and AA were exactly the same price, about $1100 one way. It was a hassle to ticket on CX side though, as they requested sending in credit card and ID pictures before issuing tickets. After dealing with them once, I switched to AA for simplicity.
It looks like CX has dropped the infant fare to 10%. Before AA’s IT catches up, it is worth the hassle to buy from CX.
Is it possible that they’re quoting you 10% of the AA codeshare for that flight, and that the codeshare is sold at an inflated cost?
Related: I spoke with a Singapore Airlines representative yesterday about booking a one-way international United flight with Krisflyer miles: they told me that the infant ticket would have to be issued by UA.
TG
I’ve booked like 6 rts to Hawaii with Singapore points on United Flts $25 each way for luggage .Within the first 24 hrs u need to do the whole deal or just cancel it . I didn’t know till I Checked In the first trip it was $50 but so what . Some of their fees are insane but the Cheapest and a non-stop was their last posted Trip out of 10 to FCO !!!
CHEERs
I have booked hundreds of international lap-child tickets with the lap children being accompanied by adults using airline-issued (adult) award tickets for partner-operated flights. I most commonly defaulted to getting the initial flight’s operating carrier to do the ticketing and would do so regardless of which airline did the initial accompanying adult ticket using miles. In other words, contrary to conventional wisdom, the operating carriers can generally issue the lap child ticket regardless of which carrier issued the accompanying adult’s mileage ticket. And it has saved money given that the ticketing carrier for the adult mileage ticket may try to use a far more expensive ticket basis and policy than the operating carrier. I have done this kind of thing over the phone and at airport ticketing offices too.
For some more related info about interesting international lap child ticketing experiences: https://viewfromthewing.com/the-strange-way-to-ticket-infant-travel-on-qantas-when-redeeming-american-miles-how-i-saved-1800-traveling-with-my-daughter/