Which name provided during booking a flight is the one that counts?

Question

I wanted to check prices on a flight from Ryanair and because they wanted a name up front I entered "Test Me". After going through all the extra options that Ryanair provides and clicking through ~15 pages with offers for additional services and goods I finally came to the total price. Then I switched off my tablet and thought about it for a while.

When I opened up the tablet browser again 2 hours later, ready to book the flight the flight details were still there and I could just continue booking. By this time I completely forgot that I even entered something because in my mind I didn't even start the process of booking yet. Also, during the whole booking process the name "Test Me" was never displayed anywhere, but my real name was.

So then I created an account using my real name and details, paid for the flight providing my real name and details again and finally I did an online Check-In, again, providing my real name and details and even my passport number.

When I then printed the Boarding ticket on it was the name "Test Me". When I contacted Ryanair about this they requested 160€ for a name change.

Long story short: Which name is the one that counts? And do I really need to pay to have the name changed, even though I registered, paid and checked in using my correct data as printed on my passport?

Answer 1

It sounds like you did two things in the same process -

1. created an account and made a purchase under one identity, but...

2. for a booking under a different identity

This is perfectly acceptable for most airlines - one account can make a booking that another person will be flying, or in other words the account holder isn't restricted to only making bookings for themselves.

Hence why you saw (or more likely, thought you saw) one set of information during the purchase flow - that side of things was related to account creation and payment, not the booking (which you had already set up in your previous searches).