Bizarre bug: couldn’t book reward flight with a man!

[astra19]

I have the strangest bug when trying to book a 2 for 1 reward flight. I get all the way to choosing passengers, and it wouldn’t let me select anyone except my existing travel companion… and that travel companion is male. It auto-selected Female, and Male was greyed out. No worries, I thought I will just enter the details again. Nope, no men allowed!

I just booked it anyway with my now-female companion and I was able to change it back to male afterwards. I tried on three devices and three different browsers and I had the same error on all of them. BA IT never ceases to amaze me.

[NorthernLass]

There have been a few reports about this recently and it’s happened on my last couple of bookings. I’ve never known gender be checked on boarding passes etc, though, I’m not sure how they’d even expect you to prove it!

How did you manage to change it afterwards?

[E]

I had this with a booking last week. Would be good to know how you changed it later as I just booked it in the end with the wrong gender!

[astra19]

We were able to change it by changing the passenger information that’s required by the US. It didn’t throw any flags up doing that.

[NorthernLass]

Was that in BAEC or on your ESTA application, sorry, it’s not clear?!

[astra19]

Hi, it was within BAEC in Manage My Booking and “You need to provide more details before you fly”. That part is what had “Female” in it. We had to enter address in the US, etc but that can be updated later. My husband has a US visa rather than an ESTA but it doesn’t really make a difference because it’s just one of the tick boxes in that section.

[E]

Thank you astra19 – that worked.

[NorthernLass]

Great – will try that!