lynnt

Hi, I am new to this forum and would like to seek some help from anyone here. I am trying to book an air ticket to Australia and I am a little confuse by the first name and last name issue.

Full name as shown in passport: Tan Tee Sin, Shawn (Example)

From what I understand, it should be entered like this:

First Name: Tee Sin Shawn
Last Name: Tan

Everything was fine until I got to the confirmation page just before making payment, I double checked again and the name was shown as Tee SinShawn Tan.

Will there be any problems since the name will not exactly match what is shown on the passport. I've called SIA hotline but the CSR wasn't exactly sure, the response he gave was the name should match the passport otherwise there might be a chance that we will not be allowed to board but he also suggested that I typed in according to the above example. I then explain that I did the above but the name turned out to be in the wrong order, which he then claimed then it shouldn't be a problem.

Please advise me. It is my first international flight and I just wanted to make sure that there will not be any problems. Thanks in advance

LyingFlat

If your passport is:

First/Given Name(s): Tee Shin Shawn

Last/Surname: Tan

Then the ticket really only needs to be booked as Tee Tan.

Another example:

First/Given Name(s): John Andrew

Last/Surname: Smith

This would simply be booked as 'John Smith'

SQ325

My experience:

Last name: Tan
First name: Tee Sin

Drop the Shawn.

In Singapore they will fix it at the CI if there are any problems (for example with the related E-Visa).

We have a more complex problem:
Example: "NEO See Teo Sally MILLER" as in the passport.
I booked already as MILLER Sally or NEO See Teo or NEO Sally. We were never rejected and if the CI staff was not sure they changed the name at the CI-Counter. Seems not uncommon.

Guy Betsy

No, don't drop the Shawn if you passport has it.

On Malaysian passports, the surname isn't distinguished separately, as it does on other countries. Mainly because there are many 'bin ahmad' etc so they stick the full name on with no difference in surnames. So one's surname is on as the second name.

If you know what your surname is, then put that down - eg TAN
If your full name is (Example) : JOHN TAN AH KOW

Surname (Last name) : TAN
First name : JOHN

If airline wants you full name (eg flights to USA), then you have to put it down as : JOHN AH KOW

Most importantly, if you frequent flyer account only has AH KOW TAN, then you should not stick JOHN on your booking as it will screw up the FFP info.

How the reservations page shows your name is not the same as how the airline sees it.

The airline reservations system always displays the surname first, followed by how you put the first name in order..
But when its displayed on the reservations website, it will show what you typed, and then followed by surname.

If you have not booked this before, please get someone who has made such bookings before, to book it for you.

And BTW< if you're going to Australia, I can process the ETA for you.

I normally require that you have at least 80 posts, but I'll make an exception for you since its your first time here.. and this is to welcome you to FlyerTalk !

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ocean...plication.html

SQ325

deleted

slacker

Hi,

I am wondering if one would expect any problem if one had booked an air tix with any airlines in the following manner:

Name on Passport: TAN AH KOW (surname is Tan)

Last name on ticket: Ahkow
First name on ticket: Tan

Thanks.

lokijuh

Typically my tickets show SURNAME FIRSTMIDDLEMR, so would show as either TAN AHKOW or TAN AHKOWMR or TAN AHKOWMS .... etc

lingua101

The name confusion is very interesting in Singapore. People cannot tell what is their first name or last name because of the mix of English and Chinese name.


Interestingly, on my flight form SIN-BKK, the boarding pass printed as Last Name, First Name order correctly, say Smith Thomas MR, as Smith is my last name and Thomas is my first name.

the agent wrote on top of that line something like
Name in Passport : Thomas Smith.

Never seen this done before ever.

crazycrab955

For whatever reason, SIA's system does this to Chinese Singaporean names when the order on the passport is: <SURNAME> <CHINESEGIVENNAME1><CHINESEGIVENNAME2>, <ENGLISHGIVENNAME>. Your experience is not at all unique.

Part of the peculiarity is that Singapore inserts a comma before the English given name, which is not generally something you find on passports. Nevertheless, SIA's system preserves some spaces and eliminates them elsewhere. When the boarding pass is issued, though, most of the time all of the given names (Chinese1, Chinese 2, English, Salutation) all get run together without any spaces at all.

At any rate, I've now seen this many times where the second Chinese given name and the English given name loses a space between them in SIA's system. It *may* show up that way on your boarding pass, but do not worry. It is absolutely not an issue and will not cause any problems at security, immigration, or for mileage credit.

jbb

My wife is Singaporean and we've always just used her English first name and skipped the Chinese first name without any problems. However, for the first time ever, she had an issue when boarding a China Eastern flight in JFK and they noticed that her Chinese first name (as listed in her Singaporean passport) was missing. They eventually let her board "because she was returning to her home country", but not before they had objections. When boarding the return China Eastern flight from SIN-JFK, they again raised a problem with the exclusion of her Chinese first name, but let her board because they had already let her board in the outbound and it was a return flight.

Her name in her SG passport:
NAME:
TAY YU YAN, STELLA MARIE

We've always travelled under "STELLA MARIE TAY", but China Eastern wanted to see the "YU YAN".

We're still not 100% sure what to do in future, but we're presuming that we'll need to put in "YU YAN STELLA MARIE" for the first name and "TAY" for the last name. This issue is coming up as I want to book a krisflyer award flight for her on a Star Alliance partner carrier and I'm worried that they'll cause a fuss like on China Eastern. Her name under her Krisflyer plan is just STELLA MARIE TAY, so to change it to YU YAN STELLA MARIE TAY we'll need to submit a change of name form.

cowie

This was what I was told by an airline: Ignore what's printed under the name field on the passport info page. Instead, the first of the two lines of machine readable code at the bottom of that page (the ones that contain lots of "<"s) determines the proper last and first names. It will start with "PASGP" if you are a Singapore passport holder.

Example 1: PASGPTAN<<CHRISTOPHER<LEE<TAT<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Last name: TAN, first name: CHRISTOPHER LEE TAT

Example 2: PASGPTEH<<MIN<LEE<BRENDA<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Last name: TEH, first name: MIN LEE BRENDA

jbb

Thanks Cowie. That would align with what China Eastern told my wife to put in "Yu Yan Stella Marie" for the first name. That is what is listed in the machine readable code in her passport: "PASGPTAY<<YU<YAN<STELLA<MARIE<<<<<<<<<<<"

RTWFF

In my experience the airlines aren't fussed about the order of the names, just that the names on the ticket correspond to the names in the passport, irrespective of order. I was booked on MH and the agent had made the reservation Last Name/First Name rather than First Name/Last Name (or whatever way round it "should" be). I contacted MH who basically said what I've just commented. I have a partner who has both English and non-English names and two different passports. However the Australian passport incorporates the names on the other passport while adding further names. There's never been any problems with checking in. Nevertheless I wouldn't try it on a flight to the US

cowie

True. No issues with checking in and immigration usually.

But if you do not spell your name consistently in your booking, you will have problems with your airline's frequent flyer programme. The name on the ticket has to match what's recorded in the FFP for the miles to post properly. I have been burnt by this -- my name is straightforward, but my partner has one of those Singaporean-style ones where there's an English name appended to the Chinese name. I manage the bookings in this household but I kept mixing the order up. He has lost miles as a result, because I had assumed that if mine had posted correctly, his will as well. With that mistaken notion I had neglected to monitor his account, and by the time I found out the usual six month retro-credit limit was over.

As a best practice I urge people to spell their first and last names, in bookings and when registering their FFPs, in the accordance to what I had said earlier.

RTWFF

Interestingly I recently booked a ticket on SQ using UA points (it's the SYD-CBR-SIN flight which seems to be wide open for other programs to book Business Class redemptions). The way the booking came through from United joined my first and middle name as if they were one name eg. JOHNTHOMAS JONES rather than JOHN THOMAS JONES. I'm not anticipating any problems as all three names appear in my passport