First/Middle name?

[david1994]

Hello Can anyone advise I have flights booked with United for a return trip to Newark from Dublin in December.

During the booking on traveller details page my name was entered as
(Title )Mr (First) David (Middle) Samuel (Last) Thompson.

My initial email confirmation came through with Traveller details exactly as above however when the e-ticket email came through and under manage my booking at united.com under traveller details the name is displayed as Mr DavidS Thompson

Will this cause any problems? Anyone had this before?

[chrissw]

This isn't an exact answer to your question, but I had a similar experience recently with American Airlines.

My surname is long, being in 2 parts separated by a hyphen, and their system somehow managed to mangle everything, resulting in something not unlike what you have on your e-ticket; if anything a bit worse.

Never at any point was there a problem. Again I realise that it wasn't United and I am not you, but personally I doubt you're going to experience any difficulties. The correspondence is clear between what's on your e-ticket and your passport.

[mixture]

Will this cause any problems? Anyone had this before?

I'm a bit of a rebel... I've got a middle name and I don't even put it on my bookings. :E

I figure as long as the first and last name match, they can use whatever brain cells they have remaining to figure out the rest when they look at your ugly mug with your passport in their sticky hands. They've most likely already used their magic databases to decide you're not a threat before you even set foot on that plane !

Its worked fine for me so far, including trips to the post-911 world of USA. As long as you've got your ESTA and you give your fingerprints and photograph to the officer when requested, there shouldn't be any problems.

Of course, if you were called Abdul or Mohammed and travelling to the USA, then you might want to be more careful and make sure you dot all your I's and cross your T's ! But your average traveller arriving from a "western" country doesn't have much to worry about ...

Americans hardly ever spell out their middle name anyway, they almost always use initials (which may be why the system shows you as it does, the system was probably designed from a US mindset).... its a cultural thing and a lot of it is to do that they use the same first/last names through the generations, so (as far as I can tell) frequently the only thing that will differentiate one US family member from another is the middle initial.... maybe with their infamous Jr/Sr suffix to boot !

You have a nice day now ! (as they say) ;)

[OldLurker]

David, I don't think you'll have a problem. After your initial interaction with the web site, which is necessarily quite modern, your booking will have been put into other parts of United's reservation system, parts of which are probably very old and may be limited by things that haven't changed for years, such as perhaps the layout of the boarding pass as printed by different airport systems all over the world. AFAIR United's original reservation system called APOLLO started life in the 1970s; after they merged with Continental they decided to use Continental's system, SHARES, which began about the same time, though later I heard that they were trying to build bits of APOLLO into SHARES. The user-facing components will have been modernised but I wouldn't be at all surprised if parts of the back-office system still have limitations left over from when there were only 80 characters in a punched card!

Your full name will still be in there somewhere, but all concerned are used to names being compressed; as chrissw says, yours is quite straightforward compared to what happens to some people's names!

[Basil]

I'm a bit of a rebel...
Surely not! :E
Some airlines only ask for first and last names which does simplify things.

[EEngr]

As long as your middle name isn't bin, I suppose you'll be OK.;)

[DaveReidUK]

How did Harry Truman manage, I wonder ?

[Opsbeatch]

Of course, if you were called Abdul or Mohammed and travelling to the USA, then you might want to be more careful and make sure you dot all your I's and cross your T's !

How do you spell Abdul or Mohammed...?!

[mixture]

Dunno... according to Wikipedia, you probably spell it like ...

عبد ال‎ or محمد

;)

[eastern wiseguy]

My missus has hyphenated her surname. The hyphen ALWAYS vanishes. It has NEVER caused a problem.

Give their customer services a call. :)

[obgraham]

Just get on the plane and go. This stuff happens all the time. Nobody cares. It's what's on your passport that counts.

[BHX_SLF]

This happened to me some years back with Continental Airlines (now all part of United).

I recommend giving Customer Services a call to put your mind at rest and make a note of who you spoke to on what date/time.

If I remember correctly, the name was infact stored correctly on the system, it was just the way it displayed when I pulled up my booking. My Boarding Pass printed correctly.

[L'aviateur]

I've flown with multiple letter misspellings, with Middle name and first name switched and various other issues caused by corporate TAs, so far never had a problem.