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I’m looking to book a one-way in CE from London to the Med next summer, first time booking a flight with an infant in-tow. I’ll be booking for 2 adults using the Barclays cabin upgrade voucher.
I understand that infants would normally pay 10% of the Avios plus £10 rtn in RFS, and that the normal protocol is to phone BA after the baby has a name and add them to the booking.
However, I’ve tried a dummy booking with the voucher including the infant and it permits me to do so, with the small charge for the infant. Am I better to do this, with a fake name, then call after the birth for them to update the name? I’m worried that phoning them to add the infant in the future will cause the system to have a wobble, given that the upgrade voucher was applied.
Maybe I’m over-thinking it and should put more faith in the system!
A fake name is going to cause a lot more hassle I think. I recently booking using 2 vouchers and an infant who turns 2 so needs a seat on the return and it was very smooth, the agent manually calculated it to double check as she didn’t trust the system either but it worked out perfectly. So I think just calling once you’ve got a name and DOB would be the way to go with this one
A fake name is going to cause a lot more hassle I think. I recently booking using 2 vouchers and an infant who turns 2 so needs a seat on the return and it was very smooth, the agent manually calculated it to double check as she didn’t trust the system either but it worked out perfectly. So I think just calling once you’ve got a name and DOB would be the way to go with this one
Brilliant that’s all I needed to know, thanks!
Re-opening this thread
I’m looking to do the same thing – we’ve booked 2 adults on rewards flights returning from Cape Town in Feb 2026. Baby is due in October 2025. BA’s standard procedure is to wait until the baby is born to add them to the booking, and request the bassinet seat. But with such few bassinet seats on board, we do not want to risk not getting a bassinet (for our sake and the sake of the rest of the passengers 😅).
So I’m thinking about phoning up now and adding a fictional infant (with the approx name & due date as DOB) to the booking to secure the bassinet seats & bassinet. Then once baby has arrived I will call to update the ticket with the actual name and DOB.
The only downside I can see is that when the name/DOB change occurs you have to pay the fare difference. But in this case an infant seat is 10% of an adult fare and 10% of the Avios – so I think our risk is limited.
Has anyone done this successfully? Any advise would be greatly appreciated
It’s not usually possible to change passenger details once booked (the only example I can think of is if someone changes their name on marriage and has a booking made under their former name), so I think you’d be making this unnecessarily complicated and it might raise a red flag with BA.
Yes that’s an awful idea (for so many reasons). Name changes aren’t possible AFAIK after 24 hours (except for typos). Changing names/DOB could be a red flag for security/immigration also.
The DOB on the ticket is irrelevant other than to check that they are under 2 years old. As long as the correct DOB is given in the API it will be fine.
However, the name must be correct (three characters of discrepancy are allowed), and you can skip any middle names. So you can do this once you have firmly decided on your child’s first name.
This is how my son’s name was decided on. My wife had made her top choice but I was unsure and wanted to wait until the birth. With a month to go I found (well HFP found) a really good sale fare for when he was going to be 4 months. My wife said I could book it if I agreed to her name choice or came up with something better in the next week before the sale ended.
Yes we could have added the infant after he was born but it would have cost 10% of the fare at the time, which was going to be £200 more.
Thanks very much for your advice / input, really helpful – appreciate it.
What if I were to book one of my nieces on the flight and then once our son is born transfer the ticket to him and pay for it to be reissued? (I assume a transfer would not raise the same red flags as changes to personal details?)
@John we were saying the same – it could force us to agree a name now!Again, you can’t change the passenger details, i.e. get the ticket re-issued in a different name (bar the 3 letters amendment mentioned). You’d need to cancel and rebook, and then you’d lose any seats and have to rebook those as well (which might work, I guess!)
The BA website is quite clear on this and is basically book your ticket now and the one for the baby when it’s born.
https://www.britishairways.com/content/information/family-travel/tickets-and-travel-documents
This is the only valid way to do it.
Anything else will likely lead to problems down the line.
If bassinet seats are available you should be allocated one at the relevant time if not reserved. Giving your newborn the right name (the wand chooses the wizard, Potter!) is far more important. IMHO. I wouldn’t try and “game the system” as you never know what checks BA, security, govt etc might be carrying out. Possibly some relate to child trafficking, bookings for people who don’t exist, etc.
Plus you never know if immigration at your destination aren’t also making checks. A question I’ve had more than once is “when did you book this flight?”
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