Thank you very, very much for posting this. I travel a lot and never heard of this.

I was told about it by my Japanese travel agent, I'd never heard about it anywhere else, I thought he might be making it up :-P Since last year he's been picky about my passport matching my ticket exactly. I wonder if foreign travel agents had to comply earlier than those in the US?

Yet another reason to avoid flying. Too much of a pain in the ass.

What if the name on the front of the card doesn't match the name encoded on the mag stripe? The dingleberries at Amex INSISTED that I should give them my middle name that I never use, AND THEY SPELLED IT WRONG ON THE MAG STRIPE TO BOOT!

At present, there are two souls named Brian Corbino on this planet, and one of them is someone else's kid on the other side of the country. Somehow, I don't think there's a likely point of confusion.

The real issue is TSA has tried to remove judgement and common sense and replace them with regulations that must always be followed. Airline check in agents then follow that approach in lockstep as TSA keeps expanding regulations designed to remove human judgement (and responsibility) from the equation.

When judgement is exercised, such as you depart from home and the agent says the fact your ticket says Sandy and your ID says Sandra doesn't matter, quickly changes when trying to return. You then find another agent says since your ID does not exactly match your name you cannot board. When you logically point out the same ticket name and ID were used when departing on that round trip ticket a few days ago, the agent replies that fact doesn't matter. Logic doesn't matter. This is the regulation and you are not in compliance.

My understanding is that lack of a middle name on the airline ticket, despite the fact it exists on your ID, will not automatically be a showstopper. It might cause delays but even then, I doubt if 10 - 20% of airline tickets in August will have middle names. There will just be too many people traveling with the same issue to make a big deal over it. What can be a showstopper is first and last name not exactly matching your ID. However, over time, lack of middle name matching will become critical as airline transition their reservation systems to support middle names. And I am positive we will not see a trend back to allowing judgement at anything less than a manager level for both airline check in agents and TSA agents. Making the wrong judgment call can result in being fired. Following regulations never will. If lack of a ticket middle name matching your ID does becomes a problem when you travel over the next several months, don't argue with the agent but ask for a manager. I agree this is will cause problems for some travelers. All you can do is try to minimize your exposure whenever you book new travel. Always exactly match names to the ID you will use.

And who is going to pay for me to legally change my name to something shorter so it fits on a credit card, drivers license, etc.? First+space+middle+last = 22 characters. Good thing I didn't hyphenate when I got married!

I work for a County Government agency. After months of turning in my mileage reimbursement sheet the same way, the payroll people threatened that if I didn't use my middle initial, they weren't going to pay me.
I have an unusual last name and I don't know why they were making a stink over it.

I put my middle initial on the next one to pacify them.

Next- they might ask for my full middle name, my daughter's birthday, my mother's maiden name or date of my last colonoscopy.

Whatever makes them happy, as long as they ask nicely.

It's an iron-clad certainty that if the TSA does something, they will do it stupidly and in a way that greatly inconveniences the law-abiding without actually making things substantially more difficult for the criminals. TSA = fail.

Sigh. When the TSA was created, I supported that because I saw it as being legitimately a common defense function that the federal government should be performing. I imagined that it would be run sort of like an agency of the Defense Department, by some people who at least halfway knew what they were doing.

Silly me.

I can give you all a little perspective on this since I was on the project that hired the first group of screeners after 911. I was hired by a company out of Melbourne Fl to be the network admin that ran the medical data collection site and reported back all the medical screening data for the applicants.

Needless to say I got to meet all of the applicants that came thru my sites. I did Boston Logan, Denver International, Hilo Hawaii and finished up JFK/Dulles at the end.

Many of the candidates were good folks looking for a decent job but there were some real winners.

The pay scale for these first screeners was not a living wage in many of the cities and they really were not paid much better then the old security guards that used to be at the airports. I have heard its gotten better but not by much.

TSA has seen upwards of over 150% turnover so even the rewards of a GS style of job was not enough to keep them.

The main contractor for the whole process, NCS Pearson, was hit by the GAO (General Accouting Office) with huge fines for fraud,waste and abuse as well as losing a class action lawsuit brought by its employees for unpaid overtime.

Not an auspicious start to thier role in keeping America safe.

And yet ... and yet, we're told that the same government is going to successfully run Government Motors.

LOL!

I heard about this via Perkins also. I cannot imagine a lack of a middle name is going to be a big deal for awhile - maybe if your two names match someone on the watch list. A mis-match would be bad.

My full name has been required to match for all international travel I have done since the beginning of 2007.

At present, there are two souls named Brian Corbino on this planet....

Lucky you.

There are parts of North Carolina in which there are six or seven of me - all named for the same common ancestor.

Add in a few more really distant relatives in Georgia, Texas, and California and it gets confusing - and the last name is pretty unusual.

I get my dad's AARP solicitations and once got a collection call for a third or fourth cousin.

I've gotten used to using my middle initial.

What about those with a little transgender they've taken along with their transfat?

What about the airline ticket website that doesn't have space for a middle initial, let alone a middle name, for your purchase?

Well I'm sure I'm on the watch list -- I'm ex-military so that gives a few points for the disaffected list of possible terrorists.

I'm a registered independent so that adds a few more points.

Then throw in the fact that I have a cousin by name, not by blood, that is doing/did 5-7 for vehicular homicide.

I have flown -- but my coding always seems to be for the "advanced screening".

You know, bashing the TSA and stupid sex offender laws is OK and all, but it seems we're missing an opportunity for a much more engaging discussion: About the assassination of the Kansas abortion doctor and whether his killer and anti-abortion whackos like Operation Rescue who trash clinics, threaten their employees, and harass people who work at them or patronize them qualify as terrorists.

Feel free to disregard the threadjacking.

Heh, Cheezburg, maybe Amy will pick it up.

as to the TSA. Sure, they may have a problem with full implementation, but whose problem will they make it? Are they going to automatically flag you for this? And then pull you out of line? They can make your life very hard before they reach the point of collapse. I always figure and extra 2 hours on either end for airport hassles and such... suddenly a 500 mile trip is just as long either way, except you don't have a car to drive at the end.

Please note that the threadjacker, like our President, has nothing to say about the actuall, y'know, TERRORIST who shot and killed a man in front of an Army recruiting station in Little Rock.

In other words, stuff it. The street thugs in Chicago rack up a bigger body count in one day than the off-the-deep-end anti-abortion psychos did in 40 years, and this is somehow newsworthy? The fact that half of the body count ascribed to the "pro-life movement" was racked up by one psycho ought to tell you something about "incitement".

And if you really wanna go there, then the President himself is gonna qualify as a terrorist on account of his "This administration is all that stands between you and the pitchforks" shit.

I knew the nation was full of Grammarians.

But here's what'll toast you.

I don't have to have my middle name on my badge at Savannah River Site, or to enter dozens of Federal facilities with our ID scheme.

It's actually ineffective. Think about it. If I steal your identity, do you really think I won't know your middle name?

The fact that half of the body count ascribed to the "pro-life movement" was racked up by one psycho ought to tell you something about "incitement".

I'll hold my fire on this laughably inaccurate statement in the hopes of being able to dismantle it more thoroughly when it's more polite to do so. Back to the TSA, people, nothing to see here.

The pay scale for these first screeners was not a living wage in many of the cities and they really were not paid much better then the old security guards that used to be at the airports. I have heard its gotten better but not by much.

Yeah, I remember a post 9/11 report where one of the "security" firms stated that they competed with fast food joints for hires. There's really no place to go but up.

Two words, cheezy. Eric Rudolph.

As far as TSA goes, it ought to be dismantled and done away with.

Make flying have the same security as driving - fly at your own risk.

There aren't going to be any more hijackings. The assumptions that allowed them are no longer operative.

As far as TSA goes, it ought to be dismantled and done away with.

Agree. Instead, institute some sort of pseudo-random (but thorough) searches.

There aren't going to be any more hijackings. The assumptions that allowed them are no longer operative.

Agreed again. The 9/11 attack was a clever exposing of the system's flaws, but it's a one-trick deal. Neither crews nor passengers would go there again.

I agree that a 9/11 style attack plan is very unlikely to succeed again, at least in any Western nation. They'll try something else next time. (In fact, they already have, several times. But so far we're batting one thousand at catching them before they can pull it off. That's the one encouraging thing about this whole deal; someone, somewhere, is doing something right. But that someone probably isn't the TSA.)

I'm flying for business in two weeks. Our company trip reservations system has no provision, as far as I know, for passing the middle name to the airline systems. We'll see how it goes.

Shneier on Security

Airlines Profiting from TSA Rules
From CNN:

Before 9/11, airlines and security personnel -- and I use the term "security personnel" loosely -- might have let a nickname or even a maiden name on a ticket slide. No longer. If you have the wrong name on your ticket, you're probably grounded. And there are two reasons for this: security and greed.

The Transportation Security Administration wants to be sure the same person who bought the ticket, and who was screened, is boarding the plane. But when there's an inexact match, the airline can either charge a $100 "change" fee or force you to buy a new ticket. In an industry where every dollar counts, the exact-name rule is the government's gift to cash-starved air carriers.

That's the situation Gordon was confronted with, even when it was obvious that "Jan" and "Janet" were one and the same.

(See the whole thing)