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I just booked two tickets from China Southern Airline (CSA) website for my parents (fly from GuangZhou, China to Vancouver, Canada). No doubt, I need to fill in their passport information during the ticket purchase process.

Somehow, I made a mistake about the passport information. The mistake is that they are Chinese citizens and the passports are issued from China, and when I fill the online forms, I used the default values which are Canadian citizen and passport issuing country = Canada (because I use CSA Canadian website

All other passport information (such as name, DOB, passport number, gender etc) are correct. When I realize this, I called the airline support hotline and I was told the information cannot be changed.

So I am asking whether this is a big issue, will this error prevent my parents from boarding the plane (because in theory, the passport they will carry is not what I registered during the ticket purchase)?

I think it is really stupid that such information cannot be changed, what can I do (other than buying two new tickets)?

Thanks in advance for your inputs or experience sharing.

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  • 4
    Call and ask again. There's a very small chance this information is correct.
    – user4188
    Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 23:06
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    You can always update this from the CSA website.
    – Burhan Khalid
    Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 23:12
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    It's fine. I routinely make mistakes entering visa information for my wife. I can't correct it online, but the airline agent can and does correct it when we arrive at the airport.
    – phoog
    Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 23:55

1 Answer 1

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Ok, here is the update in case someone else may have the similar issue:

Background information:

I live in Vancouver, Canada, I purchased two tickets for my parents from CSA global website last night enter image description here

During the purchase, I need to fill out the passport information, and the default "citizenship" and "passport issuing country" boxes are pre-filled with "Canada", which I did not notice (my bad) and clicked Next button.

After the e-tickets arrived, I noticed the error, so I was kind of "panicked", trying to fix the issue, I called their customer support phone (which I found from CSA CHINESE website), the 1st lady did not know what to do so she asked the help from 2nd lady, and the 2nd lady seems to be confused about how to do it as well, so she passed my call to the 3rd lady (whom I assume to be a team lead or senior person), and she told me that the passport information cannot be changed and my only choice is to cancel the tickets and re-purchase tickets, which means I need to lose about 90% of my ticket value (as the tickets I purchased are not refundable).

Happy ending:

No doubt, I did not sleep well last night. Today, after posting here on StackExchange, I went to the CSA Canadian website again and found a CSA local office sales phone number, so I called the number and stated my issue, and the lady here said "of course, it can be changed" and so she updated my ticket passport information after I provided her my e-ticket numbers.

So my conclusion, CSA Chinese customer support team is far from experienced compared to their peers here in Canada, and

YES, you can modify your passport information if you make a mistake during your ticket purchase.

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    Their 'support' is probably - as usual - a team in South East Asia, with about two hours of training per person. They learn quickly to 'make things up' when they don;t know something, and claiming 'not possible' is the easiest way out.
    – Aganju
    Commented Aug 27, 2016 at 1:36
  • Also calling the CSA international help line rather than the Chinese one usually gets excellent help. I had to call them once for this exact issue for a return flight from Jakarta and it worked perfectly fine.
    – Roddy of the Frozen Peas
    Commented Aug 27, 2016 at 5:28

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