There’s an online marketplace that lets passengers sell their airline tickets, called OffFly. They arbitrage airline ticket name change rules to match passengers who want to fly with those who already have tickets, and whose names are close enough.

The idea behind the website is simple. We compare your name and surname with other users’ names and surnames. Since most airlines allow changes to up to three letters for free, we match users with similar names so they can reuse tickets. For example, with the surnames ‘Frank’ and ‘Zhang,’ you only need to change three letters, so you can do this for free!

It’s a little more complicated than this, I think.

• The particular degree of flexibility with name changes will vary by airline
  
• You may have challenges or extra scrutiny changing both the name on a ticket and secure flight information like passenger date of birth. Doing both makes it look like you’re transferring the ticket!
  
• You are also breaking airline rules by doing this, if they find out you can expect the tickets to be cancelled (and there could be consequences for your frequent flyer account).

Airlines make it difficult to change the name on a ticket because they don’t want you selling your ticket.

• People might buy cheap fares far in advance (like they’re a leisure traveler) and sell last minute (for emergency or business travelers usually asked to pay more).

• The airline needs to enforce their fare gating in order to price discriminate, charging some people more than others. If ticket sales between passengers were permitted, it’s the passengers rather than airlines who might capture the difference in revenue between cheap and expensive tickets.

• So it was mighty convenient when the government started enforcing ID requirements for security – mandating that a traveler’s ID match the ticket is necessary to prevent one person traveling on a ticket issued to someone else and that’s crucial to the the whole price discrimination system. (The government didn’t impose an airline ID requirement until 1996 as a way of looking like they were ‘doing something’ after the TWA flight 800 accident that some at the time thought might have been terrorism-related.)

However there are times you need to fix the name on a ticket, and times you need to change the name on a ticket altogether. Here’s the latest guidance from American Airlines on how to make this happen.

Basically they will agree to name changes as long as travel is entirely on their own flights, that they have sold directly, and where you can convince them it’s still you… and not a ticket being sold.

You might get married, change the name on your passport, but realize you already had booked tickets that need to change. Your name might not match your ID, because you’re booked based on your middle name or what you’re called rather than the name on your ID (maybe someone else did this for you).

Naturally someone has figured out that this flexibility can be used for other purposes, too…!

(HT: ukassz)