Originally Posted by
tods27
The problem you have with COPA is likely that she didn't end up with the ticket booked with any part of her middle name. UA won't like you/her changing this often, so the better strategy is to leave it and book tickets in a way to ensure that UA MP will actually validate. Using the 24 hr cancel policies is good here. If she books a ticket and enters her MP number, she should be able to see if it took in a short period of time. If not, cancel and rebook with the name in a different manner. As noted, when she has a middle name in MP, she should book tickets on non US carriers using the FirstMiddle method.
Well, the COPA ticket record and the confirmation email both show her middle name, though I don't know what the system believes to be the case behind the scenes. This treatment of middle names and matching with MP sounds so absurdly clunky and error-prone; I can't believe that United hasn't worked out a way to ensure proper matching with each of its partner airlines. I think for this flight I am just going to request credit after the flight, and in the future I will book her tickets using FirstMiddle (as stupid as that seems when the airline actually provides a separate field for middle name).
So what is best practice for entering names on tickets and in MileagePlus profile? Always enter FirstMiddle in the "first name" field and always leave "middle name" blank for all non-US carriers? What about MP, should I enter a middle name there at all? Seems like if I don't, then there would be a mismatch with FirstMiddle on the ticket record?