My big mistake with our Japan flight booking

[HelloandThankU]

Hi. I booked flights to Japan with Japan Airlines through Booking.com for the first time. The booking was for my husband, our two teenage children, and me. At the time of booking, there was a space for first and last names but no option to include a middle name. My husband said it wasn’t necessary, so we left it out. The total cost of the tickets was £6,100. Unfortunately, these are non-refundable tickets.

After downloading the JAL mobile app, my flight details appeared, but my husband’s did not show up in his app. This concerned me, so we called Japan Airlines. We were told that the names on the tickets must exactly match the passports, including middle names, and that we could be denied boarding if they do not match.

I don’t have a middle name, but my husband and children do. I wasn’t aware that Japan Airlines was so strict about this. We contacted JAL, but they said they cannot amend the names because the tickets were purchased through a third party. We then contacted Booking.com, and they are currently in communication with JAL, but we have not received any update yet.
After researching online, I found that many people reported being unable to get name corrections with JAL when booking through a third party, although some said they still went to the airport and hoped for the best. I don’t want to take that risk in case my family are denied boarding on the return flight. We cannot afford to buy another set of tickets. I know this was a serious mistake, and I feel awful about it — I was really hoping to take my children to see my parents back home.

I’ve been on the phone a lot with JAL and Booking.com, and my child with autism heard me. I feel like I upset him, and I worry that I made him sad. Has anyone successfully added a middle name with Japan Airlines when the ticket was purchased through a third-party site?

Please don’t cancel the tickets. Most likely you’ll be fine. We make at least 20 trips in Asia in the past 10 years (haven’t flown with JAL though) but all the airlines we’ve been with they’re not too fuss about the middle names. They always say the names on tickets need to match names on passports, but as long as the first and last names entered correctly you’ll be fine. You might give you a warning: remember to do it next time but I don’t think they would deny boarding.

Stunned at the advice to ' loose' your passports and get new ones without middle names! Is that not a form of identity fraud? And the referees for your application will be in big trouble too (conspiracy to commit fraud)
Or are British passports that easy to come by?

Oh god there is always one ☝️ isn't there 🙄🙄

Use your booking reference number to log into the JAL website and manage your booking there - including adding a middle name. Even though you booked through booking.com the actual flight, online check in etc is will need to be done on the JAL website

The screenshot says forename(s) so to me that would be first name and any middle name!

@HelloandThankU I have only read your replies, not the whole thread, and I think this poster is right. You are absolutely not at fault here, booking.com is.

Booking.com is a Dutch company. The Dutch don’t have middle names, most of them have more than one first name, I have lived there for years and seen anything between 3 to 5. The website is misleading and assumes the Dutch custom works everywhere.

It would never occur to me to enter my middle name as a first name because it is exactly what it is, a middle name. A company that serves a large international market should honestly be a little more culturally aware and not assume that everything works the same way as in the Netherlands. They have misled you OP.

I’m afraid being polite and blaming yourself doesn’t get you anywhere with booking.com, you need to get medieval with them. They have effectively sold you a service that you are not able to use, because of the misleading information on their website, I would first threaten to escalate with a consumer ombudsman and the credit card company and go from there. If you don’t feel able to be more persistent with them, OP, please ask for help. You said yourself that you can’t see your husband’s ticket on JAL which should be your starting point in conversation with them - you paid for a service and they didn’t deliver.

BTW, Booking.com has a class action lawsuit against them with the Dutch consumer organization for manipulating hotel prices. They are not the good guys and they definitely don’t deserve to keep your hard earned money OP.

I think at this stage you are doing the best thing by waiting to see what booking..com come back with.

You made a genuine error & they should fix it.

I never book with my middle name and have never had an issue. I'd take the risk!

ICAO, which regulates passports, makes no distinction between "first name(s)", "middle name(s)", "given name(s)", and forename(s)". There is only "Primary" and "Secondary" name information. "Primary" is your surname and "Secondary" is all the others. So whether you think that you are 'Mary Beth' Smith or 'Mary' 'Beth' 'Smith' makes no difference. See ICAO Doc 9303 for the gory details.

Similarly, the airlines' Advanced Passenger Information systems, supervised by IATA, require that your ticket matches your passport, but they just run all of your names together with a slash after the surname (SMITH/MARYBETH) and check that that matches the passport. (And even then there's a limited number of characters, because these systems are very old.)

I recently had exactly the same problem as OP with a direct airline booking because I hadn't put all my given names (I never do, but I will start doing so now - I see plenty of airline booking forms that don't say "Note: You must include all of the names from your passport" when you buy the ticket). The issue only came to light because I went to a self-service kiosk, where the run-together name didn't match the booking. When I went to a check-in desk the problem was fixed immediately. I suspect that check-in people have probably been adding my middle names to my reservations when I check in at the desk (I don't use self-service very often) for many years.

PS: While Booking was founded by a Dutch guy (who, after selling out for millions and retiring, later went back to work there because he was bored), and is headquartered in Amsterdam, it is in no meaningful sense a "Dutch" company. It has been an American-owned company for 20 years and employs large numbers of international staff. People in every country in the world, with a thousand different ways of structuring their names, book hotels and flights via Booking every day, and we do not hear hundreds of stories of people being denied boarding as a result. (I'm not making excuses for Booking here - I don't like them very much, and the one time I booked a flight with them I had a heck of a job finding the underlying 6-digit airline booking code - but this is really not just half a dozen clueless Dutch people deciding that everyone has "four first names and no middle name", not least because, again, in both ICAO and IATA worlds, there is no distinction made between the two.)

TBF I think some comments from a few days back were triggered by the fact a few of the claims made in early posts were close to unbelievable, so there were a few🙄

The thread has moved on and that issue seems no longer relevant....

@Massagetime I think you’re absolutely right. My husband is very similar to you — he just said to wait for an update from Booking.com and, in the meantime, try to stop worrying about it for a while. I think our relationship has lasted because of his laid-back personality. Bless him.

@samarrange The website should have then asked for “given names”, or “primary and secondary names” as per international standards. “Given names” is the wording on EU passports. It asked for “first names” instead (OP posted a screenshot). It doesn’t matter what hundreds of thousands people around the world are doing, what matters is that booking.com have not used the standard terminology.
I don’t think it’s a requirement to be versed in international flight regulations to be able to book a flight.

Are you seriously enjoying kicking the clearly distressed OP or just wanted to feel better about yourself for knowing ICAO Doc 9303?

It's not rediculous at all. Flights to Japan have sky rocketed. A direct flight to Tokyo is 1200+, times of year will increase that. Not everyone wants to do stops.
It's great you got a good deal but don't compare their trip to your different destination.

@youngestisapsycho The flights to Japan are expensive as they are now longer. No flying over Russia I think means they are longer. Most people choose to go direct and that’s often more too. My experience has been that the routes are busy and demand is high which also affects dynamic pricing. NZ has various options for routes but non stop Japan doesn’t and clearly few airlines operate the route. So you cannot compare Japan with NZ. Plus what difference does it make to the OP’s issue? None at all.

I'm not trying to kick the OP at all. In fact I'm trying to say that I think she will be fine if she goes to a desk at the airport (which I put in a previous reply), because this kind of situation is pretty common.

(Also in response to @Massagetime )

Sky rocketed or not have a look at JALs fares on the route this summer.

I'm not going to analyse every day but as far as I can see you're really hard pressed to get to 6k return pp in economy.

Even if you could get that, so 24k for a family of four, I find it hard to believe an OTA is going to discount the same sectors, same class of travel back down to 6k total, for four.

I think you need to just rely on booking.com to sort it out.Their "name boxes" (for want of a better word) are quite ambiguous - if Japanese airlines are as fussy as think then their boxes should factor that in.

I hope you get it sorted, I would have done exactly the same as you.

I have two middle names and we recently booked multiple (some long haul) flights through a travel agent. We didn't realise until checking in the day before that the travel agent had put one of my middle names as my surname, so had essentially double barreled me. There was no issue at the airport either way, they issued me my boarding pass. In this instance I had all my names on my passport and ticket, in the correct order but in the wrong place. We were also not able to change the tickets as we had booked through a third party, the travel agent also couldn't change the ticket and we were told we would have to rebook the tickets at whatever price they now were. We decided to risk it and it was honestly all fine - no one batted an eyelid.

Contact Resolver. They have solved 2 consumer problems I was having. They're brilliant.

We flew with EVA air recently and I had this same panic about middle names. Everything on line suggested that the names had to match however our travel agent assured us that it would be ok without a middle name.
It was all absolutely fine on both EVA air and the internal flights with Bangkok Airways and Thai Airways.

I know this doesn't change anything for OP but just thought I'd mention it in case it ever helps anyone else!

This.