Thunderroad

My passport name is John David Smith.
My SkyPass name is John Smith.
And to complicate matters further, I want to transfer some Chase Ultimate Rewards points into my SkyPass account to top it off for an award ticket. My Chase name is also John Smith.

Must all of these names be exactly the same for me to make the transfer? In other words, since I'm not changing my passport, must I change my SkyPass and Chase names to John David Smith and in turn make the reservation in that name?

The question is even more complicated for my wife and her account.
Both her passport and Skypass names are Jane Joan Smith Doe (with the two words Smith Doe being her last name; and the Smith is my last name).
Her Chase name is Jane Doe.

Any advice on what to do for her award ticket, which would be from miles already in her SkyPass account supplemented with her Ultimate Reward points transfer?

For what it's worth, we have a family account with SkyPass.

Thanks for any help.

rwong48

Check-in people (at least ICN returning to USA) have to "correct" and sign/stamp your boarding pass if your passport name does not match the itinerary name. Anyone else further down the path could give you trouble for any reason.

I made 4 roundtrips in 9 months with this hassle (plus not properly accruing miles, dealing with mileage claims long after the flight, etc) before I finally submitted the form to get it fixed (at SFO, upon completion of my trip). Upon arrival, I just had to go back to the departures area and drop it off at the Skypass counter. They updated my profile immediately.

My next 3 roundtrips in 10 months no longer had the hassle, and I utilized Morning Calm status, although way later I reissued an old ticket with the old name, no status/membership-number, and actually am delaying claiming the miles because I don't want my status to renew too soon. Probably the last part of this ordeal of a simple mistake.

Just get the Skypass part updated/fixed. It takes a few minutes once you're at the airport - not sure otherwise.
You probably noticed that the award ticket forces you to use the Skypass name, so try to avoid locking yourself into the "wrong" name if possible.

On the Chase side, I think it's fine if Chase has a slight mismatch, but I don't know for sure. Passport+Skypass should be an exact match.

vh_bu98

I've been flying with Korean Air without my middle name on my Skypass account even though it's on my passport and I never had an issue.

mikesaidyes

Middle name doesn't matter for Korean Air.

Thunderroad

Thanks very much for the useful info, folks!

rwong48, was the difference between your passport and your itinerary simply that your middle name was missing, or was it something else?

rwong48

Yes, just a missing middle name.

Having someone correct it every time is a small "problem", but it's not much effort to fix, either.

Thunderroad

Very good to know. Thanks again!

Wangja

But confusion can arise when ticket says 'Smith John' and Skypass card says 'John Smith' ...

Thunderroad

Thanks again for this info. In view of this advice and other useful comments here, my thinking is:

1. I shouldn't and can't try to add my missing middle name on my SkyPass account and the ticket for my upcoming award trip, as this could invalidate the ticket.
2. I should wait to add the middle name to my SkyPass account until after I finish all of the four flights on this trip, so as to avoid the risk of invalidating any of those flights or other hassles.
3. This means I may have to jump through a bit of a hoop for each of those flights (unless as others have noted, Korean doesn't care about missing middle names), but these are manageable.

Does all this make sense? Any other advice? Thanks.

rwong48

They told me to submit the profile-update form on arrival at home, once all of my trips were over.

Until then, you should expect ICN check-in staff to correct and correction-stamp your boarding pass (at the very least) on your way out of ICN, or maybe it won't happen at all.

Thunderroad

Thanks again to all for the help with this. FWIW, no problem flying from the USA to Asia with the ticket missing the middle name that's in my passport. Haven't done the return yet; it won't be until December.

Josh1780

I've had an issue clearing security at GMP when my middle name was omitted from my boarding pass as it didn't match up with my ID. They had to call someone from check-in over to manually write it in on my boarding pass before I could proceed. I would get it changed sooner rather than later just to be sure.

SanDiego1K

We flew two domestic Korean Air flights this past week. On the second one, security stopped us. Our Korean Airline boarding cards, booked with our membership points, did not have our middle names. Our passports do. We were sent to the ticketing counter where the agent printed boarding cards, handwrote in our middle names, and stamped the boarding cards. We were then allowed thru security.

I do not see a way to add our middle names to our Korean Airline profiles. I'd like to avoid this issue in the future. Is there a way to do so?

mikesaidyes

I haven't edited my profile in years, but my current sky pass account literally has 마이클 / LAST FIRST MIDDLE. I've flown all over from Incheon, Gimpo, Jeju over the past 12 years and they've never hand written my full name on the card BUT they do always literally check it letter for letter at the first ID security check. I believe that means that when I made my first name I just put FIRSTMIDDLE like that (because that's how I write my English name as a foreigner living here for everything).