Originally Posted by
jcjchung
Im interested to know where your friend was travelling to and from.
Ive never had a problem. Im worse, I use my middle name on my passport as my first name. And leave out the first name completely.
Im of chinese origin and on my passport, my chinese name comes first followed by my english name. This is how it is written on my passport.
When i booked my tickets- ive always used just my english name (as first name) and surname only. Ive never had a problem. Touch wood. I fly internationally all the time on various airlines including Jetstar. Though I have not travelled to the US since 2006 but will be in 2 months. I know the US has gotten stricter since last year with their advance passenger information.
I would like to know at what stage of the boarding process did they pull your friend up on this. Was it at check in or at the boarding gate?
FWIW, I am in a similar situation as yourself although in my case this is because of a European name (which is very common in quite a number of European countries). Nevertheless I travelled to the USA as per usual on my passport with ticket printed probably similarly to yours and had no problems whatsoever. I should point out that I do have a piece of official government ID which should my preferred/usual name which although I did not produce this time for the Americans, should ease any issues I might have.
FWIW, I have however started to use my full surname which is interesting as now the manifest on QF, BA and AA print quite strangely and have various characters missing. Causes quite a few strange strained looks by crew whilst they try to guess my name.
