I’m always on the lookout for interesting travel stories, and this one comes from the travel StackExchange site posted by someone who has an unusual name (from an English perspective) which sometimes causes him trouble with boarding passes.
A Name Ending In MR Causes An Unusual Boarding Pass
The original poster (OP) says:
My name is Amr Eladawy. Whenever I get a ticket through an agent and they put my first name as
Amr, it lands asAonly in the Airlines system. That happened with many airlines and different agents. That is pretty much annoying, specially during the online check-in.When I make a direct booking from the airlines website, the ticket is issued as
ELADAWY/AMRMR.It seems that there is a smart rule that considers the suffix
MRas Mister and drops it.Is this the correct behavior? What should I do to have my name printed correctly on my bookings.
- In one of my bookings, the first and last name were swapped by mistake. However,
AMRin the last name was not a problem at all.It seems that this rule is applied only on the first name.- The airlines will swear that they received the name as
Aand the agent will swear that the name was sent asAmr.- The problem maybe in the GDS used to integrate the agent’s system with the airlines’s.
- I sent an email to the GDS about this issue and they simply ignored me.
Now, moving forward.
Amris a very popular Arabic name. It’s also a very old one and has been used for thousands of years. How to properly report this to the GDS providers and get this issue fixed?I have tried contacting one GDS responsible for the latest booking I had, but they ignored me.
Why Do Mr (or Ms or Mrs) Show Up On Boarding Passes
I know that I have seen Mr show up on some of my boarding passes before, but I never thought about how that might affect someone whose name ends in Mr (or Ms, or Mrs). OP says that sometimes his boarding pass is correct, and sometimes the airline removes the “mr” from the end of his first name
- So sometimes his name shows up as ELADAWY AMR
- And sometimes it shows up as ELADADAY A (with the MR removed)
This all has to do with the ancient IT that many airlines and reservation systems use. As one respondent said:
Airlines were early pioneers in communication technologies, and have been very slow to modernize. For example, today, airline IT systems still communicate extensively using TTY: Type-A for synchronous communication, and Type-B for asynchronous communications.
There is a standard for TTY, which nobody follows, a de-facto standard by SITA, which is mostly followed, and many parties have quirks in their implementation, either not being able to parse some fields/special indicators, or emitting incorrect ones; everything you’d expect from a 100 years old format which grew organically as new needs and ideas arose.
This is a pervasive theme in Airline IT, with multiple epochs of technology being used side by side as companies migrate very slowly.
The airlines will swear that they received the name as A and the agent will swear that the name was sent as Amr.
They are both right, quite likely, and the issue lies between the Travel Agency and the GDS.
GDS — such as Amadeus and Sabre — generally offer multiple interfaces into their systems, from old ones kept for compatibility reasons to more modern ones. More modern interfaces will accept structured messages which leave no room for ambiguity; the old ones however… are full of quirks.
In general, Travel Agencies are loathe to modernize their IT: it requires re-training the agents, and buying new software, which costs quite a bit of money with little to no benefits to them.
In the case of a Travel Agency connected to Amadeus, for example, this means that they are likely using ATE: the Amadeus Terminal Emulator, which as the name implies emulates the terminals of old.
What To Do
I remember one of the first times that I noticed that my boarding pass had an extra MR (for “mister”) on the end of my first name. I was worried that this would cause problems as part of the flying process. Everyone assured me that there would be no problems, and in fact, I have never had anyone mention it. As another respondent mentioned, everyone who works for an airline or at an airport is familiar with this, so there shouldn’t be an issue. I can imagine though that there might be problems in Amr’s situation.
The Bottom Line
A poster shared on the travel StackExchange that his first name ends in Mr (Amr). This has occasionally caused issues with his boarding passes, as, depending on the situation, some airlines remove the MR from his name (leaving his first name as just A).
What do you think about this situation? Leave your thoughts in the comments below
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
The first thing you do is to make sure that the information are encoded correctly.
I always book thru an agent. Once all information are in there is always an option for you to verify the accuracy. Before you pay make sure to tell the agent that information are correct. If there is an error point it out to the agent for correction. Once you get your final ticket review it.
Upon boarding compare your ticket & boarding pass while you are still at the check in counter. If there is an error let the agent correct it. Do not leave the counter until your boarding pass & ID match.
Good luck.
This explains why, whenever I have to book through a travel agent for work, why my first name and middle initial get merged together on my boarding pass. Then when I’m traveling for fun and I book directly with the airline, it looks like it should.
You’re talking about the SABRE system as the ancient IT system. Interestingly the Electronic Health Record system we use in US was modeled after SABRE.
First, I would book tickes directly with airlines to avoid the dilemma. Second, I would call the airline in and get them involved with this and, if he made it clear that his first name Amr and it showed up on their system as AMR (including the mister) then it’s the airline’s, not his. Thanks. Khaled
Yes, on tickets your name will always read SURNAME/FIRSTMIDDLETITLE. All run together. This is normal. Do not call the airline to ask them to add a space between your first name and initial. They can’t. The title appends to the end of the first/middle name field ALWAYS. It has been this way for OVER 30 YEARS at least. It used to be pretty much required to use titles. Airlines ALWAYS did. Agencies slightly less so. Nowadays, titles are not consistently used, so more of these problems arise. If the end of that name field is MR/MRS/MS/MISS etc., then the system will read that as your TITLE, not as your given name. This will likely continue to happen for the foreseeable future. Therefore, he should always insist that his name have the title MR. then his ticket will read ELADAWY/AMRMR. Which is Mr. Amr Eladawy. Trust me on this. There is NO WAY around it if a title is not at the end of the name field.
I have stopped using travel agencies and airlines over similar issues. None of them is immune. Most recent is one that hubs out of Denver whose FF reservation system became impossible for me to access via smart phone or to get an agent. They were quick to bill me annual fees, though. I just don’t need to fight these buggy IT systems any more.
Try entering the name as AMRMR. Maybe that will work around the issue.
Why does the second option change his last name to “ELADADAY” as well as removing the “MR” from his first name? I think youve made a mistake in your reporting.
Imagine how my life is. The MR is always dropped from my name and causes shutdowns all the time.
It’s getting really old y’all.
Bombmr, Have you tried insisting that your name should read Encyde/BombmrMr? I would that having title included should rectify the problem. Better luck in the future.
@Nancy, I believe you missed his sarcasm/wit.
I’m ofter reading of people having problems with unusual Christian names. When choosing names for one’s children, one should consider names that they will like, regular names that won’t complicate, be made fun of, or inappropriately shortened.
How about this girl in her teens delivering a baby girl. The RN ask her what will she name her baby? Oh yes she will be christened Vagina Jones & really serious about it. The RN tried to convince her; explained the ramifications of the name but she was adamant
& stick to that name till she was discharged from the hospital.. Poooor baby girl!!! This is a true story, it happened in the hospital where my company is affiliated with.
You’re funny lol
And scary.
Why even use Mr., Mrs., Miss or Ms.? It seems so old fashion and an invasion of privacy.
It is ridiculous that everyone is “so advanced” in technology…but we still resort to stupid errors that an IT department cannot take the time to fix. Especially the spelling of a name. IT double verifies emails and other info…but why not a name? Names are always being reinvented for individuality. One example commonly used is people adding their maternal and paternal last names together such as “Taylor-Gomez”.
You have missed the point. When people don’t use a title, and their name ends in a candidate for a match to a possible title, the ancient code becomes insane, with the stated result. ‘Sanity testing’ is an old software developers name for the first test run after a coding change. This mistake was never tested for and is now ‘baked in’.
Next time just use ‘Adm.’ and they think you are an ‘admiral’ so may get bumped to business or first class!
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