V-Flyer

On the virgin atlantic website it states the following.

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

and on my ticket details none of our familys middle names are showing, i dont think i entered them when i booked.
I cant recall entering them when I travelled with virgin in Nov 2008, and had no trouble.

anybody had any experience of this?

Just found this in the small print.

Your booking and ticket must reflect your first and last names only. Middle names are not required.

that should be ok then.

FYI, I have travelled as Chrispin and it caused no issues at all. As you found, middle names don't matter at all, an in fact they seem to regularly lose them from the APIS details ...

I've never had my middle names on my ticket and never had a problem so you should be fine.

Jonathan

As others have said, ive never bothered and had not had any problems

Many thanks to you all.

I must admit, I have developed a habit of including my middle names when booking flights.

Though not required as such, but I did find from experience, that if there are any problems at the airport, and the agent needs to speak to me for something then I would be found much easier. Without my middle names, my forename and surname combined are quite common. Last thing you want is for the agent trying to differentiate which person they need from the other 2 guys that has the same fore-/sur-name as you.

And on flights in and out of the USA, you never know if your fore-/sur-name will trigger a selectee alert either, but by including your middle names (the US Gov can say without a doubt you are not a selectee) then less security hassle at security checkpoints.

Sure on BPs, it looks neater with just my fore-/sur-name but for security, imo I find it's best to include my middle names too.

I booked a trip to EWR for next with with the Travel team at work today and they said they now need to gather Middle name & date of birth info before an e ticket can be issued for US trips. Not sure if something has changed or not - I know APIS info is needed for US flights, but I've never been asked at time of booking before.

Ahh, booking travel at work - I have variously been told that they need my passport number, credit card and various other bits of information. I have always refused to give them that information and never had a problem...

This is to do with Secure Flight Data, not the airline and the ticket.
The US are getting a lot more strict with the info that they need to get from people (via the airline or agent).
The airlines get fined if they don't have the information so they have implemented a new system in the US where they can stop the agent issuing a ticket until they have all the required fields.

We are trying to find work arounds as people are reluctant to give out a lot of personal details to agents. What we want is for the customer to be able to get into their booking with the airline and put the info in before we issue the ticket but almost all Manage My Bookings only become active after we have issued the ticket so we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

This is really making it tough for agents unless they have good relationships with the customer.