It is a Ukrainian passport, and passport queues are flooded now with both: people getting new passports and people exchanging old passports with biometric ones, due to visa-free travel to Europe supposedly opening up to Ukrainians soon.

Plus, in Ukraine it may not be that easy to convince the government how your own name should be spelled. It is not a typo. It is how the passport issuing agency decided the name should be spelled. There are mechanisms to protest that, but it is an involved process.

Basically, exchanging the passport is not happening before the trip.

I would just buy new tickets. Only I am afraid of making matters worse with non-show situation cancelling wrong/all tickets, or something (lots of reports on FlyerTalk, through the years, of that happening).

I guess I will just leave everything as is and get ready to pay walk-in rates in case the airline protests. That is unless Expedia can offer a good way to fix this; they still have not called me back.

My own fault for buying the tickets before the passport was ready. We did not expect the curveball with Latin transliteration at all.