Originally Posted by
lamerduck
Want to add my own personal experience where I was unable to board because I didn't enter my middle name. I didn't include my middle name in the booking for a Hong Kong Express flight. I had no problem checking in and going through security, but when I tried to board they stopped me and made me wait until everyone boarded. They finally told me my name was incorrect and I had to pay ~350 HKD otherwise I wouldn't be able to board and that boarding ends in 5 minutes. They didn't accept credit card and I exhausted all my cash already so they told me I had to book a different flight. I could understand if this was brought up at check-in, but to make me wait at the boarding gate until the gate is about to close... Such a shameless money grab and one of my the most frustrating experiences of my life. To top it off, the next available flight was in 10 hours at 4x the price I originally booked.
By chance, were you flying UO a few years ago? Because there were stories back then that CX group used to be very stringent about middle name, especially if you have a Chinese/Hong Kong/Taiwanese/South Korean name and flying to the Mainland/Vietnam. I remember somebody mentioning on a CX thread that if you fly out of Hong Kong, if your name is (e.g.) Charles Wang Chao-wei, putting just "Charles Wang" will piss them off back then. Not now, though.
IIRC my CX tickets from SIN-HKG vv did not have my middle name, but I have a western name so they didn't care. SIN agents did hand-write my middle name though, in some cases.