I recently signed up and got approved for TSA PreCheck. The official spelling of my last name has an apostrophe in it. That is how my passport lists it, that is how I registered with the TSA. Example: O'Brien
I went online with Alaska Airlines to edit traveler profile, and edit my existing bookings to add the KTN. When I went back to view it, it didn't display the KTN online, it just said "Secure Flight information has already been collected for this traveler."
This weekend I flew for the first time since getting approved, and I did not have the TSA PreCheck badge on my boarding pass.
I called Alaska Air reservations support, and they were unsure why the badge didn't display. They tried inputting the KTN on their end but could not confirm if it would work. Sure enough, no badge appeared on my app (I even tried printing a boarding pass, no badge).
Alaska Air reservations seemed to think it might be related to the formatting of my last name. When I go to the traveler profile where I enter my KTN, it displays the last name like: O Brien instead of O'Brien. Space instead of apostrophe.
Reservations confirmed that the boarding pass name cannot support apostrophes. This is a problem. On my flight back not only did I not get PreCheck, I got selected for full security sweep, not fun on a 7am flight
I'm not going to change my last name, so who can fix this? I imagine TSA won't budge from the official spelling of my last name?
Has anyone dealt with a similar situation with Alaska Air (or any other airline) and if so, how did you resolve it?
If so, who did you call? Airline? TSA? And how did you resolve the situation with them on the phone? Reservations late night seemed confused and I didn't get a chance to call customer service yet.
I read somewhere online that there's a separate field in the reservation for "Secure Traveler Name" or something like that? If that is true, seems like the best solution would be to modify the value there, if it can support apostrophes.
I need to update my existing booked flights and I don't want to have to call to get this manually done every time I fly with Alaska. Does anyone know if they can update my traveler profile permanently so this will happen automatically going forward?
Sorry for the long post and so many questions! First time poster here, found the forum after doing some google searches on the topic, but not finding a specific solution to the problem.