Can I just check something? Today is September 21, 2011 isn’t it? And if I’m not wrong, most of us have been using computers for, say at least 10 or 20 years now haven’t we? And unless I’m also mistaken, one of the greatest features of a computer is, if you make a mistake on something you are typing, you can change it almost instantaneously can’t you?

This being the case, I wonder could anyone please tell me why it is the other day one of my friends had to forfeit an airline ticket for a trip he is now no longer able to make? The airline told him it’s impossible to change the name on a booking that has already been ticketed. (Translation for you and I, the ticket had been ‘printed’). How is this still possible?

I remember about 10 years ago I tried to change a name on a booking when my friend was made redundant just before our ‘Trip of a lifetime to New York’.

Another friend had kindly offered to take her place, so naively we thought it would just be a case of calling, paying a fee and getting the name changed on the computer.

It was then I learned to hate the word ‘ticketed’. The girl at the travel agent told me it was ‘impossible’ to change a name on a ticket. When I asked her ‘How impossible on a scale where world peace was a 10’? She replied 11. Because apparently once you are ‘ticketed’ I repeat, ‘the-piece-of-paper-has-been- printed’ things can’t be changed in the ‘system’.

Being a stubborn type, I refused to take no and kept asking to talk to ‘someone higher up’ to argue my case. I figured if I didn’t get what I wanted by the end of the calls, at the very least I’d have made them work for the £300 I was about to lose. It took nearly two weeks and about 20 phone calls, but I’m proud to say I managed to get it done.

I’m not sure exactly what swung it, but I’d like to think it was when I told the airline there was no chance of me handing the seat back for them to re-sell, so they had two choices 1) Make a customer happy by changing the name on the ticket, or 2) Look forward to me boarding the plane with a giant Scooby Doo that I would strap into the seat beside me. I understand the whole ‘increased security’ thing, but as it’s still possible to arrive at an airport, go to a counter and buy a ticket to board a plane less than an hour before it takes off, the inability to re-print a ticket in 2011, thus making your customer happy, completely befuddles me. Admittedly not as much as the sight of a grown woman strapping a giant Scooby Doo toy into a seat on plane would to the passengers around her.

Hear Sue on Jack 106FM's Morning Glory from 6am