I just found out my girlfriend's ticket has been booked backwards through Asia Miles. They have her last name as first name and vice versa.

I made the booking over the phone and I'm 100% sure I gave the name in the correct order and my Cathay Pacific account shows her as a Travel Companion in the correct name as well.

The agent said they cannot amend the name on her booking and cannot rebook as there are no seats left.

All they suggested was contacting the partner airlines to notify them of the error and the correct name, but cannot amend the tickets and told us to fly at our own risk.

Anyone have any suggestions on how I can remedy the situation? Our first flight is tomorrow night and we have 8 flights on our ticket each.

If ure 101% certain, tell them to rectify it otherwise ud go to court for any losses
Which airline r u talking about anyways

Call back and ask another agent, or two or three.

Never had this problem but in the end, I'm not convinced that it is going to be a problem as different airlines list names in different ways.
But if you can get it fixed in advance, that would be best.

We depart tomorrow, and they said they cannot amend names on an award booking and can only cancel and rebook, however there's no seats left.


Booked with Asia Miles / Cathay pacific award ticket. Flying on JAL, BA, CX, AB in a mixture of First (JAL/CX) and Y (BA/AB).

How many agents did you speak with? Call back and try another agent. You'd be amazed at what a good agent can do.

I recently experienced a similar issue, but had a longer time frame to resolve, and AM email support fixed the name transposition issue.

In your case, if unable to resolve over phone, and with two U.S. travelers with no visa issues or other travel restrictions, I would have shown up at airport prepped to travel, and worked with agents to resolve, as name transposition on international tickets is a fairly common issue.

At this point your flights should have departed (today is the 19th, you were scheduled to fly on 18th based on your message) -- how did this end up working out for you?

Asian names are lastname firstname. If you read out a name over the phone to an Asian rep, that's possibly the cause. I suspect just pointing it out when you check in will be fine. Its not exactly uncommon.

So we flew with JAL from BKK. I had my meet and greet people and the porters with us, and the agent basically pointed out the name was incorrect and my girlfriend gave her the itinerary and then the agent called someone for a while, hit a bunch of keys on the computer and issued boarding passes.

I asked if she fixed it, and she said yes and for our next JAL flight as well this week. Now the concern is the remainder of the flights with BA, Air Berlin and Cathay.

My sister works for Etihad and said as long as the names are spelt correctly, and that it's just the order that is wrong - 99% of check in ages won't care unless they really want to make our lives hell.

Will report back if we have any further issues during the flight.

Sorry for bringing this thread up again.

I booked three tickets for my family between HKG and SUN next month. All was well until I realised I typed in my mother's surname incorrectly. Instead of putting her actual surname, I instead put my fathers surname in it, which is not what is on the passport.

What should I do? BA can't do a thing as they issued the ticket but the character change is more than three letters. Would calling CX directly help with changing the surname to match exactly on my mums passport?

I can always use the 24 hours cancellation for BAEC but that means I will most likely lose the seats.

Sounds pretty serious to me. Can you get a revised passport ? Call CX, explain, etc. The sooner the better.

Just to update - we had no issues on any of our flights with this issue.

good to hear
otoh i've found JL agents rather good. i've *spelt* the name wrong and my gf got to fly (shes OW Sapphire at that time, not even emerald.)

But they are well known for sticking to the rules as well.

take it or leave it, i've got her ticketed as "AmF950" instead of "AmD950"
agent got a bit confused, then found her ticket (with ticket number probably) and changed it accordingly. for some reason the 1st leg was flown without issue. but withthe wrong name.

Swapped names are usually no issue, provided all the names are on the ticket and the passport.

The issue cysyuen is referring to is quite a different one, where the main name on the ticket is not in the passport.