AA may have had a "training" with their agents lately, as many of my tickets seem to be screwed up, name wise. I am one of the unfortunate million or so Americans who go by a first initial and middle name, and have virtually everything EXCEPT my passport in this format.

No real problem all these years until about three months ago (1/1/14?) when AA personnel started to get all persnickety about iT even for a routine domestic flight, insisting on 20-minute long tap-tap-tap sessions at checkin, interspersed with phone calls to various departments (including, ominously, The Rate Desk, which can never be positive).

Long story short, my frequent flier account uses the name *I* go by, and they feel compelled to change it to my passport name, as they explain "TSA requires it.". Well, they always have.... But it's never been a problem except once or twice when I had a greenhorn TsA screener, who was counseled by a more senior employee to let it pass, the names "substantially matched".

So now AA fiddles, I've had to call in for mileage on three flights (the rest all credited), AND (perhaps a coincidence?) I am regularly losing my TSA precheck status. Thanks!

No other airline seems to be having this heartburn, just AA, although I've only had 4-5 non-AA flights this year, so it's a small sample there.... But something surely changed at AA, and it affects manual name changes and AAdvantage credit.

Thus, I've attributed this to over-zealous airport agents, and am hoping that just like for the last 13 years, it will all be forgotten soon.....


(Note: I've *always* used my passport name for international itineraries, to avoid any Of this. It's just domestic flights, many with several people on the itinerary, where I prefer for my own purposes to lead groups under the name they know me as, where I've always been able to pass as "me" without any flack, getting all mileage and TSA precheck virtually every time. And we're not talking about a big discrepancy here: It is on the order of J. Stephen Dahmer rather than Jeffrey Stephen Dahmer, which ought to illustrate why I care.).