TSA Name Requirements

Starting August 1 (a few days ago), TSA was supposed to be more restrictive about making sure your boarding pass name matches exactly to your valid ID (driver's license or passport). My driver's license/passport has "Matthew Holthe" and I always had "Matt Holthe" on my boarding passes.

So, for the flight I just returned from... Frontier (the outgoing flight) was able to change my name without much of an issue - I sent them an email and it was done. United (the return flight) was a much bigger ordeal.

I had sent an email to United asking to change my Mileage Plus (frequent flier) account and asking if the flight could change. They changed the account, but they told me to call in to get the name changed on the reservation. OK, no problem. I called in and they said that AmEx travel would have to make the change but they would authorize it.

So I called AmEx travel and they said it would be $150 to reissue the ticket. I said, "no, United authorized the change". He put me on hold for a few minutes and then came back and said everything was good and the ticket was reissued with my corrected first name.

I got an email from AmEx travel about the reissued ticket, but my name was now "Matthew Holtre" ("H O L T R E") - my last name now wouldn't match my driver's license.

So I called AmEx back and the person I talked to couldn't find the new record in the system - it was like it was too quick or something. Since there wasn't anything I could do, I went to the airport.

I had trouble checking in, and the self-check in had me call up reservations. They couldn't locate my e-ticket (probably because my last name was messed up) and had me talk to someone at the counter. The person at the counter was pretty helpful and found my record and got me checked in. She had to add my mileage plus number manually to the ticket (again, probably because my last name didn't match) but got me all set.

We noticed the last name difference and the person at the counter said that the ticket would have to be reissued to fix that. She said "hopefully they won't notice at the TSA counter" and she was right - I didn't have any trouble getting through security.

I hope that now I have everything straight on my AmEx travel profile and all the frequent flier accounts so that I'll be set from this point going forward. We'll see how it works next week - my US Airways flight lists my first name as "Matthewmr" right now...

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