My mother just had a strange experience checking into a flight in YOW. She uses a hyphenated last name, but the total number of letters between first name and both last names was always too long for AC's computer system. The solution (proposed by an AC manager at the airport several years ago) was to chop the last letter off the first name and write the last name without a hyphen. That was fine with both AC and AE, never had any problems over the last 5+ years with the airline (or any other airline for code shares) or with security or immigration.

Yesterday, she was not able to do OLC. Today at the airport the agent told her that the law had recently changed (she flew in January the last time, also without any trouble) and that she could not board with her name not matching her ID exactly. The agent had to call a manager to authorize a name change, then they had to fiddle for quite a while with the computer to squeeze the name into the system. Finally it was done and they let he go. The agent claimed that AC handles these sorts of situations for free, but other airlines would just deny issuing a boarding pass.

Is anyone aware of this change in law? Was this the agent being over-sensitive, or has something actually changed in the last months?