erik123

Passport names are often different from names on tickets because there are many alphabets, accents, etc. in existence besides what's used by Alitalia et al. Mistakes in translating these into a name on a ticket are common and thus most airlines (and the INS - NOT US Customs) will give it some leeway.

orbitmic

I think there are two issues at stake here which I think need to be addressed in turn rather than together.


Issue 1 is whether or not the passenger should have been allowed to travel or not.

The bottom line is that if a passenger is not allowed to enter a country (because the passenger doesn't have a valid passport, his/her visa, or name on the ticket doesn't match the name of the passport - since the airline has to send early information about all passengers to the US, etc), the airline will have to pay a fine as well as the cost of their trip back.

When the airline realises that there is an issue or mismatch, the whole question becomes whether the airline believes that the issue might lead to the passenger being refused entry, as obviously, they are adverse to paying the said fine and rapatriation costs. Now of course, we can fill in pages and pages of whether the US immigration officials would have said 'no worry at all, Deborah and Debbie are just the same' or 'no way, it has to match your passport, that's the rule, you are flying back' but I don't think one can blame the airline for being risk adverse.

Incidentally, for what it's worth, when I had to have a visa done a few years ago (my passport was of too old a model to be compatible with the visa waiver programme), the US embassy told me that the first name on the visa and on the passport had to be exactly the same except for accents, while the middle name didn't matter.

So on issue no1, both with regards to the right to be risk adverse and to the fact that I believe that in that case there was indeed a non-neglibible risk the US immigration officials would have been unhappy with the mistake, I would say that Alitalia was right to ask for a new ticket. And no, an airline can't change the name on the PNR, new name=new pnr. (might be different for a transferable ticket but certainly not for a non-transferable one).

Issue 2 is whether the passenger should have paid the full cost of the ticket. As noted above, the idea that Expedia would have spontaneously changed a 'Deborah' into 'Debbie' out of the blue is totally absurd, so we have to accept that the person who booked the ticket knows the person as 'Debbie' and didn't realise that her passport name was Deborah (or just thought it didn't matter). Here again, on paper, I think that AZ was entirely right to make the passenger buy a new ticket. This being said, I would suggest that good customer service should lead the airline to reimburse the cost of the second ticket as everything was the result of a genuiner - and reasonably understandable - mistake.I would write to AZ, take a very low profile, explain that this was a surprise present and the person who booked has always known the passenger as Debbie and didn't realise her passport name was in fact Deborah a dn ask for a commercial gesture in the form of the reimbursement of the second - and unused - ticket.

I would NOT contact Expedia because they didn't do anything wrong,
I would NOT take an aggressive posture towards AZ because they didn't do anything wrong either
I WOULD take a very low profile, acknowledge the error made but ask AZ to be reasonable since the error made was not in fact made by the person who ended up having to pay for it, and since AZ did not have to support any cost related to the second ticket having had to be issued.

cfischer

nope, but someone can. If the ticket was booked with a name other than the legal name in the passport I guess they can rightfully demand a new ticket, especially if purchased from Expedia ... but they could have simply fixed it.

l'agentsecret

Unfortunately, front line airline staff or representative cannot force the system to accept a name change in a PNR. Most GDS have limitation as to how many letters can be changed in a passenger's name. If more characters are amended, the entire booking is automatically cancelled. Going from "Debbie" to "Deborah" would certainly have exceeded the authorised limit. Changes of this nature can usually only be processed by the airline's Revenue Management and would require a lengthy procedure incompatible with the time constraint imposed by an imminent departure.
Whilst AZ could have allowed the passenger to board the flight,
1- there is no guarantee that she would have been allowed through customs on arrival in the US
2- She might have encountered a less understanding check-in agent on her return, leading to a much more expensive one-way ticket having to be purchased in order to fly back home.
Now, some GDS will allow to "replicate" a booking, i.e. take all the information from 1 PNR and transfer it onto another, the latter without name. This is however only possible if the booking class is still available and if the new booking complies with the original fare's conditions in terms of advance purchase.
As correctly analysed by Orbitmic, I do not believe that AZ should be blamed. Surely, they cannot afford unnecessary expenses such as fines.
My advise would also be to try and appeal to AZ's goodwill. It is however more likely that they will authorise Expedia to refund the initial cheaper ticket with or without penalty rather than reimburse the new one.

maclover

I agree with other posters that Debbie and Deborah are quite different names...

If just the "h" were missing I think it was a no problem, but here the difference is quite clear

dldkjones

Is it just the first and last names that must match? Can the middle name be left off of the ticket if it appears on the passport?

orbitmic

As far as I understand middle name can be omitted without any problem at all.

IrishRed

I have had the airport staff change my name on a ticket...about two years back I had booked in my maiden name but my passport was in my formerly married name. Now I will mention that I had caught the problem (completely my own doing) early on, and this was all sorted out a few weeks before I flew. I called Continental and was advised to take my passport and documentation to support that both IrishRed and IrishGreen are indeed me (my maiden named drivers license and divorce decree sufficed), and the phone CSR put a note on my file. The desk agent didn't question it a bit and knew exactly how to go about it, so I would speculate it happens enough. I was not charged, even though by this point the fare had changed AND she had to issue a duplicate PNR for all four of us due to my name change. ^ Continental. Of course I had booked on Continental.com, so there was no middle man either...which surely helped.

Anyway, she actually put BOTH last names hyphenated on the ticket, (IrishRed-Green) so it didn't technically match my passport after the change, either. Still, no problems flying nor with Irish or US Customs/immigration.

Also Ryan Air changed it on the same trip (from one name to the other, no hyphen) at the airport the morning of my flight, and in the shock of the century they didn't charge me for it! I was fully prepared to buy a walk up ticket, which technically was cheaper than their name change fee. Guess I got an agent in a good mood

Obviously policies vary from airline to airline, and country to country, but it can happen.

To the OP: since you say the tickets were booked on Expedia, I am assuming that the name mistake was typed that way at the time of booking and therefore isn't really Expedia's fault...and I don't think you're going to get very far with them especially after the fact. Expedia pretty clearly states that the name must match the passport, and that name changes are not allowed. Now if the passengers name is Debbie and EXPEDIA were the ones that made it Deborah (or vice versa), I would say you have a complaint. Otherwise...don't expect much