Comment by kjetijor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kjetijor | Hacker News Reader

I'll add another airline story. SAS, the Scandinavian flag carrier - which you'd think would have Scandinavian characters down. I've had an account with them since, well, they got a web presence. My last name contains an ø - for which; technically at least Norway accepts both o and oe as valid transliterations.

Order a ticket online, they pick the transliteration for ø as o, passports transliterate ø to oe - the less ambiguous choice. This generally isn't a problem until you want to travel to one of the APIS countries - USA or UK, which won't let you check in if the name on your passport doesn't match the name on the ticket.

I have tormented many check-in counter staff with this, especially at regional airports that don't see a lot of international travel.

Hi. I wrote part of this flow for SAS on the original mobile app years ago. I am so sorry.

We had to do it because the underlying backend is Spanish and the APIs are insane. Behind our JSON-wrapper is an adapter to translates it into teletype friendly format … spaces, new lines and tabs makes it look like a ticket you’d get from a travel agency in the 1970s.

This format is also the reason why your name is truncated on your ticket (or so I was told). IT in the airline industry is insane and many systems are many decades old at this point.

A bit surprised you have trouble with APIS though.

This is why I am on HN :)

My mom's last name is Saint-Pierre, but it's actually written as St-Pierre on her passport. She almost couldn't get on the plane in Atlanta last year because of that. You'd think such a simple abbreviation would be accepted, but apparently not.

> won't let you check in if the name on your passport doesn't match the name on the ticket.

This is always a paranoid worry of mine. Even worse, some airlines tend to include the academic title in there too, meaning I've had tickets reading "MRDRWRONG, PROBABLY".

Not only does it not match my passport, but it also makes it look as if I'm a murderer.

transliteration of documents most likely is covered by a national standard

it should be possible to file a complaint to you country's standardization agency and they will pressure the airline with fines

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