Q. I booked a flight to Berlin with my friends for May, It’s April and I've found out I can’t go. I want to change the name on my ticket and gift it to a friend. Why won’t my airline allow this?

A. Very few airlines allow name changes. Among the ones that do are Air Canada, WestJet and Frontier Airlines, sometimes for free, other times for a fee, depending on the fare you paid.

Part of the reason is that if name changes were universally allowed, some enterprising person would buy up dozens or perhaps hundreds of seats at the lowest fares and then resell them (with a name change) to other passengers when the fares are higher, such as for last minute travel. This would make for chaos in the airlines’ booking procedures and result in a loss of revenue.

It would create a “ticket tout” marketplace similar to what concert or sports event attendees experience.

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