Even correct spelled names in the in the wrong fields won’t do, like first name in surname and vice versa. Where does the problem occur? Cause you have like atleast 5 – 10 customs agents and flight staff manually watching your passport/ticket, and they should be able to conclude that the ticket is yours. Or?
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Think of how many different ways people spell a name. Just pick one. I’ve witnessed John, Jon, and Jo’n. All the same pronunciation, different people. Now your job is to literally match exact fields to exact entries. If they don’t match perfectly, you’re either fired, held accountable for a massive loss event, or maybe helped someone get home.
Dunno about you, but those first 2 options suck, even if they’re not as likely as the third one.
In statistics we worry specifically about the “cost” of “false positives” vs. “false negatives”.
In this case lets allow “cost” to the result.
Let’s also say our assumption is that a typo on a flight ticket is always the result of deliberate malice, a person is trying to illegally sneak on a plane as part of a criminal act.
If the person is totally innocent and it’s just a typo and we prevent them from getting on the plane, that’s a “false positive” and if the person is a criminal but we let it slide, that’s a “false negative”.
The cost of a false positive is inconvenience to a person, they have to get their ticket corrected, or prove their identity and that’s a darn hassle, but only for that person. The cost of a false negative is the person is committing a crime and going to commit a criminal act of some sort.
By definition security will seek to limit false negatives as much as possible (prevent crimes) and it doesn’t really care if false positives get swept up in their process.
It depends on the airlines, the type of your flight, etc, etc. I had no problem, my company reserved a ticket in my name. And instead of V, they used W, no issue at all. It was inter-Europe flight. Maybe in the US they ahve stricter rules.
In general this isn’t a problem. I’ve had misspellings, even a shortened *version of* my first name (Kenneth -> Ken) on flight tickets. It’s not an issue and in general customs and immigration don’t care about the name on your ticket, just the name on your passport.
I have a name with non-English character in it, so it gets translated on tickets to a two character combo. This has never been a problem even tho it does not match my passport
I remember years ago we flew from NY to LA my grandfather booked us tickets over the phone. There must have been a misunderstanding because all of our last names were misspelled in the same way (one letter off) the TSA gave us a hard time despite it clearly being us. (First names were all spelled correctly) had to get a manager to finally let us through.
Crossing a border is usually completely separated from getting on a plane, customs don’t ask for your boarding pass, they just want to see your passport.
I take it you’re not a middle-aged white female, or else you would have gotten away with it.
Just gonna quietly remember the time that my sister and I were flying from London to Seattle and the gate agent marked our boarding passes with correct names but identical birthdays… definitely a good way to cause a two hour delay while sitting on the full plane waiting to get moving…
The ticket doesn’t matter. I’ve been to at least 5 countries on 5 different tickets, different airlines that had my last name spelt wrong. Travel agent’s / airlines mistake not mine.
If it’s close enough, they will allow it. The bureaucracy of 10 agents is probably related to something else. Maybe a visa issue, or they didn’t know some obscure law between your country and theirs, and the ticket get piled with everything else.
Edi:T I always travel with a copy of my receipt / payment that I made for the ticket. So if any issue happens “I paid for this, look at the receipt, not my problem you guys made a mistake”. But I never needed to to that, even though mistakes were made.
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