Passport Name Steven - Booking Name Steve - Does it matter?

sjw64

Hi

Ive just booked a flight with Virgin to SFO next August and my name on my passport is Steven but the name on my booking e-tickets is Steve.

Ive just noticed on the Virgin webpage this little gem

For security reasons it is absolutely essential that the name on your booking, ticket and passport are exactly the same.

Steven - Steve ? Is it okay?

Marktheshark

You wont be flying.
Get on the phone ASAP and correct the mistake.
Think they charge an Admin fee of £45 per ticket to correct mistakes.

phatbear

contact virgin and find out first thing tommorow.

if i said "yeah its fine" then you got to the gate at the airport and they didnt let you board will you tell em phatbear said its ok therefore its ok.

Caz3121

what name is your ESTA in? it needs to match your passport as well!

GwylimT

It needs to be the same on your booking, passport and esta, not similar as after all Steve is not your name.

Voyager2002

Let us know what happened...

Just be sure, when you speak with Virgin, that you ask to correct a mistake rather than asking for a 'name change'.

sinizterguy

They usually have an allowance of up to 3 characters difference in your name between ticket and passport.

But, it would be better to head off all that and talk to customer service and get a correction in. Don't ask for name change.

pogofish

sinizterguy wrote: »

They usually have an allowance of up to 3 characters difference in your name between ticket and passport.

Nope - my ex was refused for a US-bound flight with only one character difference between name and passport.

Other countries may be less strict of course but these days, you mostly need to be punctilious.

sinizterguy

pogofish wrote: »

Nope - my ex was refused for a US-bound flight with only one character difference between name and passport.

Other countries may be less strict of course but these days, you mostly need to be punctilious.

And I have flown multiple times on multiple airlines where either me or someone with me had spelling mistakes or other errors.

As you say, the US may be stricter or it may be that your wife encountered someone not familiar with the policy.

There are reports on FlyerTalk of people with errors and/or shortenings being allowed to fly, even to the US. There may be reports disallowing them to fly too ... But that's not something I was looking for, and may have missed it.

InsideInsurance

You'll find that there is a fair amount of variance and the only safe way to proceed is to have them match identically. Saying that when booking with a tour operator a couple of years before we got married their system wouldnt support dual surnames and ran the two names into each other. They said even if you hyphenate it, which my wife's maiden name wasnt, their system still stripped the punctuation and made into one word.

Thankfully didnt have any problems but I certainly tried to get it changed as not wanting to take the risk.

callum9999

InsideInsurance wrote: »

You'll find that there is a fair amount of variance and the only safe way to proceed is to have them match identically. Saying that when booking with a tour operator a couple of years before we got married their system wouldnt support dual surnames and ran the two names into each other. They said even if you hyphenate it, which my wife's maiden name wasnt, their system still stripped the punctuation and made into one word.

Thankfully didnt have any problems but I certainly tried to get it changed as not wanting to take the risk.

Formatting quirks are different though as your name is still there, and different airline systems can mix up names etc. anyway. On several tickets I've had in the past, the Mr is merged with my first name.

As someone else said, if you turned up with this error then you have a decent chance of getting through. There is however a significant chance you'll be stopped, so the risk just isn't worth it.