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Just turned up at Hanida airport and was told I had to pay £35 per ticket if we wanted to fly to Hong Kong because we each didn’t add our middle names. In over 25 years of flying this is a first! Wonder how many airlines do this or just the Chinese milking it via Hong Kong Express. I’m sure if I had booked as a reward flight via CX this wouldn’t have been an issue.. makes Ryanair look normal
I’ve never needed anything other than first name/surname, that sounds on a par with Wizz Air shenanigans!
Some people have about 6 names – how many do they expect you to add, exactly?
As soon as I saw your thread title, I had a feeling your post would relate to HK Express.
I’ve been looking into HK Express for the past few months, as I am planning to book with them to fly from DAD to HKG next year and I’m aware of a number of issues/complaints with regard to middle names (and charges to add them at the airport). They do seem to be stringent about this and even have very specific guidance on their website about how to enter names in bookings: https://www.hkexpress.com/en-hk/need-help/customer-care/flight-bookings-faq-name-testing/
While I am preparing to add our middle names when we do book with them, I otherwise never add middle names to our flight bookings. That said, there have been a few instances (e.g., in South Korea) where check-in agents have hand written in our middle names on our boarding passes and then stamped them, so I guess middle names were seemingly required (even if we weren’t charged to add them).
Middle names are quite important in that part of the world. In Korea, almost half the population share three surnames – Kim, Lee and Park. In China over a billion people share just 100 surnames. Having worked in marine travel often involving seafarers from these countries, I have observed how middle names do matter. Even with the middle names, duplicates were not that uncommon within a 30-40 man crew.
Having worked in marine travel often involving seafarers from these countries
I always laugh out loud every few days when you tell us about ANOTHER job you have had! 😀
Except Chinese don’t have “middle names”, they mostly have two character given names although I know a few with only a single character given name.
But I guess HK Express set the rules so you gotta follow them.
Except Chinese don’t have “middle names”, they mostly have two character given names although I know a few with only a single character given name.
But I guess HK Express set the rules so you gotta follow them.
Yu sound like quite the unique character yourself, Froggee!
Froggee at bottom of well thinks sky only as big as top of the well.
Evens so my mama says I’m special.
What does £35 buy you these days?
Let’s say The Streets averages 12 flights a year (six trips), and has been flying for 25 years, then with the lack of middle name he should owe £10,500. Double it if the wife flies too.
That’s a lot of Nando’s…
I got done for this by Vietjet. Had to pay I think like £3 or something equally irrelevant.
We had a similar issue with Vietjet last November. Our middle names were written by hand on our paper boarding cards. There was no charge.
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