Originally Posted by
seawolf
Value entered in MIDDLE name field on AA website or AAdvantage profile DOES NOT make it to CX or BA PNR. That is why AA’s workaround is to have AAgent confirm if passenger have middle name on travel document. If so, add it to AA’s FIRST name field which will show up on CX/BA in GIVEN name field.
The "middle name" does make it to the CX/BA PNR! It will be found in the APIS/Secure flight field of the PNR when opened in Amadeus.
All airline reservations systems have the following fields:
1. Names field consisting of LASTNAME / FIRSTNAME
2. APIS/Secure flight field consisting of LAST / FIRST / MIDDLE
It is when airlines start to "dumb down" their system for their front end agents (and end customers booking online) by using GUIs then it becomes a problem.
In AA's GUI:
GUI LAST NAME = Names LASTNAME & APIS LAST
GUI FIRST NAME = Names FIRSTNAME & APIS FIRST
GUI MIDDLE NAME = APIS MIDDLE
For CX's GUI:
GUI LAST NAME = Names LASTNAME & APIS LAST
GUI GIVEN NAMES: Names FIRSTNAME & APIS FIRST
I suspect CX's
motivation for their GUI design (and mapping to Amadeus) is to
prevent Chinese first names that have two parts "SIU MING" from being split into two parts resulting in FIRSTNAME = SIU, MIDDLE NAME = MING when keyboard passport scanners are used to scan passports during the check-in process (the smarter agents would try to do a manual search in the passenger identification screen to find the passenger).
Machine readable line as scanned by CX check-in staff:
CHAN<<SIU<MING becomes the following in Amadeus
Names field: CHAN / SIU MING (SIU MING is shown in the "Names FIRSTNAME" field)
APIS Field: CHAN / SIU MING (SIU MING is shown in the "APIS FIRST" field)
Machine readable line as scanned by AA check-in staff:
CHAN<<SIU<MING becomes the following in Sabre
Names field: CHAN / SIU (The passport scanner interprets < as a separator between SIU and MING and only uses SIU as the first name for the "Names FIRSTNAME" field)
APIS Field: CHAN / SIU / MING (SIU is shown in the "APIS FIRST" field, while MING is shown in the "APIS MIDDLE" field)
Somehow I have a feeling that westerners like "SMITH/JOHN or BROWN/PETER" would not have a problem!! This is targeted towards people with with Chinese (two part) first names.