ckramer

I will be travelling to hawaii from frankfurt togather with my girlfriend. By mistake i put her name instead of her surname and vice- versa.

The airlines ( air canada to go and continental to come back ) are saying that they cannot hcange the name since i booked through an online travel agent, and the travel agent is s aying that to change the name i have to cancel theticket and buy another one ( this meaning that my girfriend would have to travel on another flight since apparently the itinerary i am taking is full.

has anyone had this problem before. I read in the forum some similar cases but they were not travelling to the USA. Mybrotheronce did the same mistake but it was in europe so everything went fine.


both airlines are saying that for them it is not a problem but i don't know what will happen at security gates. ( TSA data asked by both airlines were filled out correctky )

GUWonder

There are many people traveling in your kind of situation to/from/in the US daily, and if there are any problems, it's usually of the trivial sort such as the airline agent not being able to pull up the record using a swipe of the passport (which is easily resolved by pulling up the record using the record locator), not getting your frequent flyer number/benefits to take in the system (without manual intervention, after the flight in the case of mileage credit being quite often needed if wanting the miles).

The info the way DHS want the info can be sent to DHS regardless of how the name is on the ticket itself. Name sequence being backwards on a boarding pass generally is not even noticed by the TSA, and if it is generally accepted in practice anyway.

Don't worry and enjoy your trip. Just get the airline rep to pull up your record using the record locator and/or ticket number and all should be well. Name order reversals are usually acceptable and involve no stupid stink from the TSA.

bocastephen

Who issued the ticket is going to be a problem. I had this very situation occur on a ticket a friend issue for their parents on AS - a quick call to the airline, and it was taken care of. Actually, they wanted it ticketed first before doing the name swap.

I would push the issue with the TA and try to get them to re-issued the ticket properly, as it's really not a big deal for them to do this.

Otherwise I would avoid all contact with airline staff during check-in, using online check-in and outside bagdrop wherever possible. Your problem might be exit controls from FRA, who will compare the ticket/BP with the passport and might raise a stink - the private airline security dimwits who check you before boarding could be another issue as well.

Try and push the TA to fix it.

GUWonder

I wouldn't waste any time to do the above, nor would I even worry about any of the above.

For an EU-US itinerary of this sort it's nearly impossible to avoid all contact with airline staff, not that it is even needed to be done.

FRA passport control doesn't generally care about the name order being reversed -- it's quite literally a daily occurrence, sometimes hundreds of times on a given day at FRA.

The TSA-wanted-and-approved airline security contractors may or may not pay attention to such a name reversal, but by itself it has never resulted in any more inconvenience than perhaps a request for additional ID of some sort from some of the many people in such situations on US-bound flights operated by US carriers out of FRA.

Ari

+1,000,000,000,000.

This will waste a lot of time and the OP might as well just bang his head into a brick wall.

+1. ^

Excellent advice.

No one EU-US is going to care and the computer systems used to do APIS/SecureFlight don't require the name(s) entered to match ticket names. It is the actual info on the passport that goes to APIS, not the name on the ticket. As far as SecureFlight, it would only matter if one's reversed name happened to be on the NFL/SSSS list; otherwise the name submitted to SecureFlight doesn't matter anyway.

adhiren

This is slightly on-topic but the US requires you when making your reservation to put your name down in that section exactly as it appears on your passport. And there's a first name box and then a surname box

However, EU passports don't specity a first name field on passports and so our passports just say ""given name"and then another section saying "surname""

I have 2 names listed under the given name so should we be imputting both names into that first name box on the form ?

Also, more on topic, in India the first names and surnames are reversed as to what it is in western culture...so the us government can't be too particular i figure

thesaints

Don't worry. Just make sure she hands out her passport upside down.

And they aren't: Still trying to figure out if the "De" in "Robert De Niro" is part of his first name, last name, or some sort of "expanded middle initial".
Leonardo DiCaprio wisely dropped his blank space. Of course, seeing two capital letters in the same word they now assume he's African-American, but that's another story...

GUWonder

While what you note above is traditionally true with some families/cultures in and around India -- and even in China, Korea(s), Hungary -- what you say is not true for most Indians or other South Asians.

alanR

Thus forms that have sections for "family name" and "personal name". Though what happens in states where it is common for the "personal name" to be Mohammed but everyone - even family - calls him Joe even though it's not in any official documentation

catandmouse

and wait until someone from Iceland tries to explain to you how family names and given names work there!

GUWonder

I'm not from there, but it's pretty easy to explain: generally the surname becomes ___son or __daughter where the __ is the "primary" name of the father and based on whether or not the person is a son or daughter.

You should check out the phone book around there -- alphabetized by first names.

It doesn't change a thing necessarily as there are places where all related forms filled don't have such labels for the fields but a document or documents produced have the labels you mention. [Consistency within even a single government agency isn't necessarily a given.]

Then there is the circumstance of airlines looking for first and last name but (some) document(s) being issued as given and surname with name order not necessarily being in the way that is most common in the US or much of Europe and not necessarily even being correctly labeled (for reasons of the sort mentioned in my prior paragraph).

These kinds of situations are quite daily occurrences at airports around the world.

ckramer

I just came back had no problems whatsoever. THanks

Ari

Thanks for coming back to report.^

triehle

I was waiting breathlessly to find out how much trouble you are in with your gf for mangling her name.

Nicolas Zavallone

Same happened to be on my trip to Bali for Christmas. I booked via airticket to get dual airline ticket and swapped the surname and first name around. At the airport both the agency and airline showed no flexibility. First ticket was cancelled with no refund and I had to buy new tickets at high prices. The airline refused to issue the boarding passes. I'm going to escalate this within south African airways to get a refund as I bought the same tickets twice however I'd suggest everyone to investigate company policies before going to the airport