Hi all,

I’m trying to sanity-check a situation that both airlines are giving me conflicting (and not very reassuring) answers on.

Booking details:

• Flight: Beijing → Chengdu
• Operating airline: Air China
• Ticket issued by: Air Canada (Aeroplan award booking)

Issue:

When the ticket was issued, part of the passenger’s middle name was truncated (likely due to character limits).

• First name = correct
• Last name = correct
• Middle name = partially cut off (not missing entirely, just incomplete)

What the airlines said:

• Air China: warned there is a risk of being denied boarding because the name may not match the passport exactly. The risk is increased apparently because we are flying with children (note: the name issue is on one of the adult’s tickets). ÇA are not able to change the name, but told me to call Air Canada and have them change the name on the ticket to be either the full middle name or the first letter of the middle name.
• Air Canada: says they cannot modify the name (seems to be a ticketing/system limitation). When I asked them if they could reissue the ticket, they said that there’s no more availability on that flight and suggested refunding me the points and me booking a different time which is not an acceptable solution.

So I’m stuck in a situation where:

• The discrepancy was caused by the system
• Neither airline is willing/able to fix it
• But I’m being told there’s still a risk at the airport

My questions:

1. Has anyone flown Air China with a truncated middle name like this (especially on a partner-issued ticket)?
2. Did check-in or security in China care about partial middle name mismatches?
3. Is this treated as a non-issue in practice (like missing middle names often are), or does Air China tend to be stricter?
4. Any success getting this corrected at the airport, or noted in the PNR?

From what I’ve seen, truncation seems fairly common with long names and codeshares, but I haven’t found many Air China–specific datapoints for domestic China flights.

Appreciate any real-world experiences — especially recent ones.

Thanks!