A few days ago I booked Delta Skymiles award tickets for myself and my husband, for a trip to Italy next September. I was happy to get them at the lowest tier for international award travel—just 60,000 miles per person. The Delta agent used the info from our Skymiles accounts to make our reservation. When the emailed ticket confirmations arrived, I saw that my middle name is missing the final letter, and my husband’s ticket is reserved with just middle initial rather than full middle name, but his middle initial is placed at the end of his first name with no space (e.g., instead of JOHN QUINCY DOE it says JOHNQ DOE). I know that the names on the tickets should be exactly the same as the names on the passports, which use our full middle names. I called Delta to see if they could make a correction. The agent said not to worry about this. She said that the “misspelling” of my middle name is just a space issue. On the secure passenger information attached to this reservation, my full middle name is shown, but there was insufficient space to put all the letters on the ticket. She also said not to worry about my husband’s ticket. She said the attachment of a middle initial to the end of a first name happens all the time and won’t be a problem at check in. I told her that I’d feel better if the tickets were reissued with correct full names. She said she could not do this because they are not Delta flights, instead they are on the partner airlines of Virgin Atlantic and Alitalia flights. She said I could call those airlines and they’ll reissue. I suggested she just cancel our tickets and rebook, since I was within the 24 hour grace period for free cancellation and changes, but she said that the low-level award seats were no longer available, and the new tickets would cost significantly more miles.
I called Alitalia and the agent said that if our passport uses the full middle names, the ticket must, too, or we could be denied boarding. He said we need to get the tickets reissued, and he insisted that Alitalia could not do this because the tickets were issued by Delta. He said Delta would have to do it.
The next Delta agent I spoke to agreed with the first that this will not be a problem for us, despite what Alitalia said, but to ease my concerns, she placed my husband’s full middle name on his secure passenger information. She also put “notes” on our reservation.
Should I assume we’ve done all we need to do? Does anyone know of a recent situation in which a passenger was denied boarding because of a name discrepancy like the ones I have described?