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I need to book a flight for me and my spouse.
I am supposed to get a refund for my ticket from my workplace, but we need to pay for my spouse's ticket ourselves.
In order to get the refund, I need to submit a receipt for my own ticket, however when booking a flight online I believe I will only receive one receipt for both tickets.
I can book each of our tickets separately, but there are a few things I'm afraid of:

  • The price might be higher.
  • The first ticket I book might be the last ticket for that flight at that class.
  • We might not get adjacent seats.

Am I right to have these concerns or am I just paranoid? Is there a way to book two flight tickets online in one purchase and get two separate receipts?

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2 Answers 2

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If you book two passengers in one booking, you'll always get a single receipt. Now, to answer points 1 and 2 you raise: the prices is going to be higher only if no more seats are available at the same price. Many online flight search sites DO give a notification of the number of seats left at a particular price if they're running low. For instance, Kayak has a small icon showing this, next to where they show the icon for 'red-eye' flights.

Seating is often not allocated during the booking process, but rather during the check-in process, so this question is moot when booking. Even if it allows you to choose seats during booking (perhaps as a paid add-on to your ticket or if you're higher up in the frequent flyer tier), you can always choose later on during check-in where you want to sit. Finding seats together is usually a bigger problem for large groups, not couples. And if you want to ensure it, choose seats during web check-in rather than leaving it for airport check-in.

Or you could just edit your receipt like SigueSigueBen suggests.

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  • I booked the tickets separately and everything went OK, there was no difference in the price. I also think that, like you said, we will have no problem finding seats together at check-in. Thanks!
    – Joe
    Commented Sep 13, 2012 at 12:49
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When you buy a ticket online, the receipt is usually just an HTML file that is displayed on screen and sent to the email address you provided. You can save either of those files to disk, open it in a text editor and remove the line listing your wife's ticket (might be more than one line in the source file) and then change the total sale price to the amount for just your ticket. You might need to change the total in more than a single place, but you ought to be able to make the modifications necessary in no more than a few minutes. Open it back up in a web browser and print.

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  • Isn't that illegal?
    – Joe
    Commented Aug 13, 2012 at 12:13
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    I don't think it's illegal per se, only that your employer may have any issue if you edit and then inflate the price.
    – Ankur Banerjee
    Commented Aug 13, 2012 at 12:25
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    You're not likely to be breaking any laws, but you probably are breaking company policy. I'm sure that Joe's company requires him to submit the original invoice, not an invoice that has been tempered with, even if, effectively, the tampering was done in good faith.
    – MastaBaba
    Commented Aug 13, 2012 at 12:55
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    @MastaBaba If he is hiding the fact that he is going with his wife, then he has more serious problems with work than changing a receipt. If he isn't hiding it, then why not just submit the original and explain the situation to accounting or management? They'll just cross off one item and keep the paperwork for their records.
    – SigueSigueBen
    Commented Aug 13, 2012 at 15:01
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    I was not implying he wants to hide anything. Just pointing out that manipulating an invoice would probably not be appreciated by his company. And, indeed, if I would be running Joe's company, I would have no problem with his wife being on the invoice but Joe not getting a reimbursement for that. But, sadly, many companies are not that reasonable.
    – MastaBaba
    Commented Aug 13, 2012 at 19:32

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