Two letters of my first name transposed on boarding pass. Should I be worried?

Question

My wife made a typo on my ticket where my name reads Micheal instead of Michael. Other than this everything is OK.

I was able to use the ticket when leaving the USA, as I did not need this ticket to pass through TSA and the airline did not care about the issue. I will now need the ticket to pass through airport security in Warsaw, and it is the ticket for my international flight.

I feel that I should be OK to get through the Warsaw airport, as from what I recall from flying in and out of Poland a few times, they are a bit more relaxed than the TSA.

What I am nervous about is getting back into the USA. If they check my boarding pass, they will notice the slight error in the spelling of my name. Although I will have the next boarding pass which states my name as Michael and 3 forms of ID (SS card, DL and passport).

Should I look into spending 100 euro extra to change my name, or just go with the current boarding pass?

Answer 1

The only place where the name on your ticket/boarding card matters is at the departure airport when you're trying to board the flight. It matters there because the airline wants to check you're the person they were paid to transport.

Even so, I doubt the airline is going to make a fuss over what is obviously a simple typo in the passenger name.

Once you get on the plane and arrive in the US, all that matters to immigration is that you can prove that you should be allowed to enter; a (presumably US) passport will do that nicely. They don't care about boarding passes of arriving passengers; it is not their job to worry about the airlines' revenue management strategies.

Answer 2

I could talk as my personal experience. I have one First Name and two Surnames. When I buy tickets to US, I fill only my First name and the last surname. It will be different from my passport. However, I never had any issue.

Another question as a reference -> Travelling to US with United Airlines with only one first name and only one last name

Answer 3

Just a datapoint to contradict the previous answers. There was recently a report of WOW Air denying international boarding due to a missing middle name on a boarding pass (vs. their passport): http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2018/04/10/woman-kept-off-wow-flight-for-not-having-middle-name-on-boarding-pass.html

Based on this, I’d take the effort to contact the airline to try to correct the error or at least get assurance that it won’t be a problem.