What to do if we book wrong travel date by mistake?

While booking flight tickets, dates are most paramount information. You get the date wrong, changing it will be a nightmare. Most of the lowest fare deals come with restriction that date can't be changed- if you book for a wrong date either pay 100% extra and book a new ticket or change your plan to suit whatever dates shown in confirmed ticket.

I had an experience in this regard and I would like to share the same.

I wanted to book a flight ticket between Mangaluru and Chennai for a family member. I selected onward journey as 16th Jan, return journey as 24th Jan and searched for flights first on Makemytrip. As Indigo was the only airline that had direct flights between Chennai and Mangaluru, I went to Indigo's website to create a booking. The return fare was coming just under INR 6000. Indigo also promoted me to buy their premium package- pay some 1500 Rs more and get free food, couple of date change options, seat selection etc. I decided to ignore these and save that money. However Indigo now adds some 600 Rs + as convenience fee on return tickets, so I was scouting for ways to avoid this.

Decided to try Easemytrip.com who are popular for not charging convenience fee. Entered all the details again, got same fare without convenience fee and I could now book return ticket for INR 6000 on EMT instead of INR 6600 on Indigo.

But I had a shock after I saw the booking confirmation. Return date was being shown as 18th Jan instead of 24th Jan. I remember I had selected 24th Jan initially, not sure at what stage it got changed to 18th Jan. 18th was too short and wouldn't give us enough time to finish whatever work my family member had to finish in Chennai. It was my mistake I didn't cross check the date one more time before payment. Even EMT interface was not intutive to highlight this that I could have realized the mistake and done correction before paying.

Now that I had paid and ticket is confirmed, below were our options

• Option 1: Change plan as per ticket date- return within 2 days instead of 7-8 days planned earlier and plan a separate trip later if required.
• Option 2: Pay some 3000 Rs extra and book a separate one way ticket for a later date
• Option 3: Check with customer care if anything else can be done.

We spoke to Easemytrip customer care- they simply said they can't help- Only Indigo can change the date

We next spoke to Indigo customer care and explained that return date has been wrongly booked. Because the call was made within minutes of booking Indigo staff accepted our request and agreed to change the return date. We had to pay any fare difference and convenience fee. Since there was no fare difference, we ended up paying INR 315 as convenience fee to Indigo to get our return date changed. This was much better than having to spend 3k again for a new return ticket.

I believe calling them immediately helped. If we realize this mistake few days before travel and call, the same may not work- prices would have gone up, seats might have been sold out or airline might simply refuse to entertain our request as the fare is not flexible.

However lesson learnt- double check everything before paying. Else you may have to regret or spend more. What you entered on screen 1 may not remain as is when it comes to final stage. We were trying to save 600 Rs convenience fee- costed us few hours of time and effort (with customer care) and some 315 Rs extra payment anyway, but got resolved without major issue or expense.

Thanks to Indigo for quick resolution. Indigo also allows minor correction in passenger name/spelling but other airlines like Air India are adamant on these-only option is to cancel and rebook.

Old post: Indigo cancellation concerns *