Middle name ‘should’ be on booking?
 

Just

This is nonsense.

Hello, my middle name isn't in my corporate booking tool and therefore can't have appeared on any of my work bookings - and I've never heard of this before.. However if it's recommended for the US, I wouldn't have any issue with adding it.

Middle name should be in your APIS which you add to the booking along with passport information etc., but your middle name does not have to be in the passenger name on the booking - and that is correct for European travel to the US.

The reality is that check-in agents rarely have much appreciation on the pattern matching used by DHS and other agencies. I guess she was trying to be helpful, but she was just incorrect. Middle name processing cannot work off the millions of people in this world (including at least 4 heads of state) who only have a total of one name. Middle names are more a nuisance than anything else, given the prevalence of matronymics, a factor which gets in the way of middle name processing. She was right however that some - not all - European countries have an API system, as do some other countries. But in all the cases I know of, the match is made primarily on passport issuing state, passport number, passport expiry date, and date of birth, name matching is somewhere down the hierarchy. It has to be so, since the majority of the planet doesn't use Latin script and there is no agreed transliteration between the 40 of so scripts recognised by the UN and Latin. Moreover most GDS and also FLY - cannot accept some characters of the Latin script either.

Rubbish. My middle name is on my passport and driving license, but I never use it anywhere else, including on flight bookings. It has never been an issue.

I'm glad to be told authoritatively that the check-in person was wrong. I have three middle names (indecisive parents, I guess) so getting them all into the booking would be problematic. I regularly run out of space on other forms as it is. I would add that in countless flights over the years to about forty different countries I have only ever used first name and last name on bookings and I have never had a problem.

Look at this way: can you imagine Señor Alejandro de Llano, on a cheapo £34.96 HBO to BCN, of which he is understandably fond, being told rather forcefully at LGW check-in that his middle name is Cruz?

My immediate thought was the late 18th Duchess of Alba:

María del Rosario Cayetana Paloma Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Fernanda Teresa Francisca de Paula Lourdes Antonia Josefa Fausta Rita Castor Dorotea Santa Esperanza Fitz-James Stuart, Silva, Falcó y Gurtubay

My TA in Muscat couldn't even get that right once. I was booked (and flew both ways) as Mr Steve. Even my first name didn't match that in my passport.

Did the sky fall in?

Nope, no one seemed to care. Even I thought I'd have to buy a new ticket and sort it out later (it was a fully-flex CW).

I have had my middle name hand written on my boarding pass by the BA agents at SIN numerous times and been told my booking should always match my passport. Vietnam Airlines did the same on internal flights. I've learnt to just shrug my shoulders and let them do what they want now!