Dubliner1

Apologies if this has been covered before. The Dubliner1 are travelling to Tallin today with Finnair on a BA 125 ticket. I checked in on line yesterday without any problems. At the Finnair baggage drop off this morning, I was accused of not inputting my forename correctly - the boarding pass just had my first initial. It was clear that this was my issue to sort out - Finnair were not going to let me in the plane as the forename did not match my passport. I asked for a supervisor to be told that as the individual was dealing with a flight I would have to wait for 15 - 30 minutes. Alternatively, I could go to BAbto sort out. Thankfully, the BA ticket desk was quite near so I walked down and explained the problem. While they they were sorting out the issue (unloading me and re-issueing the ticket), I went through my previous boarding passes in on iPhone wallet. To my surprise, I had several issued with just my first initial. The BA ticketing desk had no idea why this is happening. For the record, I fly over a 100 flights per year and while an error is possible I am unlikely to just put my first initial in on severs occasions.

So, has anyone else come across this before and if so, how does one prevent it reoccurring?

paul4040

I have never had that exact issue before but I have had, on various airlines, various BPs with my name in different formats. My name in my passport is correctly in the format: FIRSTNAME DOUBLE-BARREL (including hyphen), and I've had BPs which say:

FIRSTNAME DOUBLEBARREL (most common)
FIRSTNAME DOUBLE BARREL
BARREL DOUBLE FIRSTNAME
FIRSTNAME BARREL

and in fact all sorts of weird combinations. It seems Finnair were being rather officious.

I've never had a BP or ticket which includes the hyphen in my name.

I note you're a Dubliner. You don't by any chance have an Irish name with a non-standard Roman letter, like Máirtín? I wonder if the presence of such a character might throw the system.

corporate-wage-slave

This isn't a requirement, this is AY (or possibly an AY agent, or possible a ground agent working for a staff agency working for a ground agency working for AY) coming up with their own rules and interpretation thereof. Clearly the ticket needs to identify you, and clearly the API needs to be correct, but this could have been achieved by the original naming you used. I suspect the root cause was someone being over official here, just because they could.

For those who are more generally known by their second (etc) forenames, then this is normally OK. After all when James Callaghan was prime minister he may have missed a tannoy announcement requesting Leonard Callaghan to report to the desk. So he would reasonably be travelling as L James Callaghan or JamesL Callaghan or even LJames Callaghan.

I've travelled for donkey's years on a truncated version of my passport name, with one initial. Even Aeroflot doesn't mind.

One very common cause of this, incidentally, is corporate and TA booking systems taking different view on how names pass through the ticketing process. So someone who starts as Leonard James Callaghan can end up as Leonardjames Callaghan or Leonard James or LeonardJam Callagha just to give some examples.

irishguy28

So! British PMs have form in ignoring calls from the public, then!!

South London Bon Viveur

Seems like a jobsworth employee to me

englisha

I assume you have a long first name. I say this as when we travel as a family, my daughters Boarding pass often only says A for first name. Shes only 7 and it actually upsets her and she cant figure out why they dont just use Alex (shes still obviously oblivious as to how computer systems work). We have never had any problems boarding or going through security though.

Dubliner1

Many thanks for the responses and good to know CWS that this should not be a problem.

I have a 7 letter English (as opposed to Gaelic) forename. Interestingly, my children have a double barrel surname without a hyphen and there were no issues for them!

This is not a one off by Finnair apparently according to the BA staff and 3 different AY staff members in the end were enforcing this policy on security grounds so it seems to be AY issue. In fact, the staff accused me of incorrectly filling in my name when making the booking. I pointed out to the last AY staff member that I spoke to after I received my boarding passes, that while their system has only my forename, they have no evidence whatsoever that I forgot to properly fill in my full name on booking the ticket and that as a result they should not state this.

The situation could have been more serious if there was not a BA ticket desk nearby. The BA ticket desk suggested that if may be my BA Executive Club details. I have looked at the email that I received and this just had my forename on it. So, I have looked up my BAEC details and low and behold while it states that the name on my card has my forename the actual forename is my first initial. I will need to contact the BAEC to update this.

navylad

Oh dear! Glad you got it sorted, are you joking the mini-do?

NWIFlyer

I'm a little confused as to what you have looked up.

Are you intending to ask BA to update your physical card to reflect your full forename? The use of initial only on those is standard practice (I have a six letter forename and five letter surname, but only the forename initial is on my card), so it's your actual Exec Club details that are important.

You may be generally on the right track though, because there clearly is some carry through on 125 stock. As an example, when booking on BA.com my name and passport details get carried through, yet booking with our corporate travel agent my boarding pass name is different (my middle name is included), but passport information still seems to be pulled and flight notifications come to my personal e-mail address which the corporate TA certainly has no knowledge of.

Dubliner1

NWIFlyer: what you thought (card only having the first initial) is something that I can see happening but it is the opposite for me. My card has my full name and online my forename is just an initial! Clearly, for my card to have my full forename means that the BAEC stores my forename somewhere.