"Welcome to the no fly list, Mr. Phillips"
 

My friend - a frequent flyer on WN - asked me to check him in for a flight last weekend. The system spit back a rejection notice, i.e. cannot process online, see gate agent. Hadn't seen this before, neither had he (and he's flown dozens of times since 9/11 on various carriers).

When Mr. Phillips arrived at the airport, he learned that his name - a fairly common one - has been added to the no-fly list and he will have to manually checkin at the counter - forever :mad: He flew Alaska later in the week, same story.

Of course the sympathetic counter agents told him that he could write the TSA, but we all know how well that process works. :(

So now thousands of Phillips will be inconvenienced because some bozo in DC had the brains to add a name from the top 100 to the no fly list. And apparently there is no way for the system to figure out which one is the bad guy except through a manual search when the checkin desk telephones the TSA official with his ID info. Score 1 for bureaucrats, 0 for common sense. :rolleyes:

I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands of Phillips who fly. Phillp and Terrance to mention only one!

It often helps to add an initial to your reservation, as this will sometimes cull you out of the undesirables.

just book using another name and use SSSS to get to the front of the line

It's time to put those responsible for the no-fly list onto the no-citizen list.

I favor physically ejecting such people from the country. No nice garbage scow to North Korea. Just the bum's-rush into the Rio Grande or the North Atlantic, please don't ever show your disgusting, un-American face here ever again.

What's the first initial? C, K, M, N, P, S or something else? By the way, I'm not surprised by this. ;) Think about the people with the last name Khan or Mohammed. :eek:

Welcome to the New America. I never welcomed it.

:td: to unAmerican blacklists.

I deleted his first name to protect his privacy, although there are literally dozens listed in the phonebook here. Of course, he uses both on this tickets. But good suggestion about the middle initial. Maybe he should adopt a new title, too (Lord? :D)

If the middle initial tacked onto the first name (or its diminuitive) doesn't work, just buy the ticket with the first and last name switched. It will increase the odds for haraSSSSment selection but only initially.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; PalmSource/hspr-H102; Blazer/4.0) 16;320x320)

This is your lucky day because you can be assured your friend is not a terrorist. If he were a real terrorist, we all know, thanks to 60 Minutes, that his name wouldn't be on the list.

From my friend:

Called the TSA. Went through five layers of menus that took about 15 minutes, all to leave my mailing address on a voicemail so they can send me the forms. Can you [deleted] believe the inefficiency?

Well, yes, you can.

Or, book with the full name like this: LAST/FIRSTMIDDLE. I've got a friend whose 14-year-old brother is on the no-fly list, but if the kid is booked that way, he's never flagged.

Which, while convenient for honest citizens, kinda makes a mockery of the whole damn thing if it can be so easily circumvented.

It makes a mockery of the mockery.

You don't need to wait for forms to be sent. If anything, the verification process has been somewhat streamlined since I last ran that gauntlet in 01/05.

http://rms.desyne.com/preform.htm

FWIW, adding a middle initial doesn't work on WN in my experience.

no it doesn't help, not in our experience
 

My husband's last name is Williams. The "no fly'd" name is John Williams per 60 minutes. My husband's first or middle name is not John, nor does any name he was given at birth or legally entitled to use so much as contain a "J." The way it was explained to us is that at best when your name is manually cleared, it's good for a few months, but it can never be manually removed forever and he should allow time at the airport every time he flies internationally forever. Imagine how many men are named Williams! He has flown three times since it happened, all on CO. When he was cleared at IAH returning from Panama, it was OK and he didn't need to be manually cleared a few months later returning from Costa Rica. However, returning from Calgary, he had to be manually cleared again. They were most apologetic and explained that even though he'd been manually cleared before in Houston, and they could clearly see he did not fit the description of the wanted Mr. Williams in question, for some reason people didn't stay "cleared" for more than a year. The agent said he could file the form with TSA but thus far he'd seen no evidence that it would do anything more.

One person's story, obviously, and I know people get different stories from different agents, but I wouldn't expect too much from such things as spelling your name differently. It might work flying domestically, but anywhere they have to scan your passport, you get dinged anyway. :(

I wonder if anyone has bypassed this by changing their name. I wonder if it would work?