How Can Your Ticket Exactly Match Your ID When You Have a Hyphen?
 

I know a number of people with hyphenated surnames (e.g., Smith-Jones). Most airline systems do not use hyphens (Virgin American being the one exception I know of personally), so what happens to people with hyphenated names when the exact match requirement kicks in? Unless the airlines change their systems (which they might), an exact match is impossible.

Probably the same way you do it when you book a cruise - just add both last names without the hyphen.

Clearly people who have a hyphen in their name "don't want to fly today"!

That's what they do now - but, it's not an exact match.

Real Americans aren't hyphenated! :D

If you've got a hyphen you must be one of those terrywrists!

Clearly they hate America. Why do hyphenated people hate America?

Clearly hyphenated names are a handicap and should be treated as a disability.:eek:

Actually folks, the TSA is working with the airlines concerning this exact issue. Names, being what they are, are often unusual or odd and most airline systems just are not flexible enough to meet the new requirements. So the TSA is in part funding the needed changes to the computer systems for the airlines in order to facilitate the upgrades. How much and who is getting the assistance I do not know, but I know that there is a great deal of effort going into making this change happen.

Talking of name-matching
 

Mary Brown is expecting a baby in about three months.
She and her husband decide to travel to their home country across the ocean in five months (when the fares will be at their lowest) with the newborn, to visit his/her/its grandparents.

If they book today, the best-fare tickets have to be issued within three days of booking.

This is International Travel.
The Airline needs full names (as per passports), dates of birth and passport numbers.
How will the Airline be able to issue the tickets within three days of booking,
if the exact date of birth (in about three months) is not known?
The parents might tell the Airline what they intend to name the newborn (if they already know the gender and have decided on a name.)
If the parents did not try to find out the baby's gender, will the Airline accept:
"If it's a boy he will be Thomas, if it's a girl she will be Tomasina."?

Cheers

Will they mandate unicode?

I'm not a computer programer, nor am I a part of the project planning for this. So that is a question I cannot answer.

I have never had an airline request passport information at the time of booking. That information is requested at check-in.

So look at the post and ignore passport #

Full Name as it's reflected on the id (although under 18 doesn't require ID except for intl travel, so that is a potential issue here), dob and sex will all be required at ticket purchase.

It's really the name that is an issue as it may not match the passport (50/50 on that one if they have made that decision) -- the rest would likely not even be noticed.

How about the standard term for an unnamed baby, "Baby"?

Of course, otherwise people named '〙➊︵┦ⓠ" would be in real trouble.

Actually, Unicode might solve a lot of problems with transliterating Chinese, Arabic, etc. names.