Middle name muddle
 

A bit of a cautionary tale for MPO members with middle names.

I rang CX to make a Y+ booking this morning and when they asked for my full name, I absentmindedly gave them my full name including middle name. I don't usually use my middle name in flight bookings but the CX agent told me that if my middle name was on my passport (which it is) it should probably be on my ticket. Fine, I said, whatever...

Until I went to the MPO website to apply for a redemption upgrade. Turns out MPO doesn't have my middle name and the system doesn't recognise me as a member of my own redemption group!

So now I have to email MPO with a scan of my passport and ask them to please include my middle name in my MPO membership. And presumably now my middle name will need to be on all future bookings, lest MPO fail to recognise me without my middle name. :headslap:

Of course it seems like it would be easier to just take my middle name off my ticket but apparently that's completely impossible.

Honestly I would have renounced my middle name if I'd known it would be this much trouble. Or changed it to "Danger".

Similar story here with both CX and CI, had to call and fax to get them changed. Middle names don't really exist in Asia. I later found it easier just to book my flights with the FirstMiddle Last format.

Note to Mods. This post is not even close to what the headline reads.

Yikes! Sorry for getting creative with the heading. Please feel free to delete or change mods, didn't mean to waste anyone's precious internet browsing time.

Sorry, I'm a bit confused.

In OP's opinion, whose responsibility is it to ensure that booking name = passport name = name on FF account? As far as I know it's the passenger's. Why would anyone have possibly set up an MPO account in a name inconsistent with that on the associated passport?

Is the requirement to fly under one's full legal name (as shown in valid identification/travel documents) anything new?

Wait till you see people with multi middle names. Some airlines combine them into a single worded middle name, some will just drop them until just one is left and Air Canada can't figure out which one to use and randomly chooses one whenever I book through them.

Fair enough, airline systems aren't set up to handle multiple middle names, people with no last name (there are plenty of people out there with only a single name) and many other cultural variants on names. But that does not appear to be evident in the OP.

OP states that he/she failed to ensure that his/her name on the MPO account was consistent with that in the passport/booking. Without further facts, that appears to be a fail on the part of the OP, not CX or MPO.

While the OP's situation is of his own making, I never include my middle name(s) in flight bookings or FFP

I don't use Asia Miles any more, but my account was in a different name to my passport (because my parents were clueless about this sort of thing - give your children as many names as you want, but don't put them on government documents!!!).

In 2008 my dad made a redemption for me and of course the ticket was in the wrong name, however CX re-ordered my names for free without requesting any proof or other documentation.

MPO: First Middle Last
JMB: Middle Last

JAL allows you to chose how you want your name to appear on your membership card, but ticket should always match passport.

Never have any problem with BA/CX/JL, they all handle my middle name pretty well.

Not trying to suggest it was anyone's but my own fault; but it's an easy mistake to make. Just a cautionary tale for others.

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure my (previous) practice of never using my middle name on the ticket was based on a booking agent years ago telling me it just avoided a lot of potential problems. I guess it is one less name to misspell.

The follow up was that I rang MPO a few days later (to ask when they might get around to updating my name in their records) and found I could apply for a redemption upgrade on the phone without any apparent problems.