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Traveler Charged Extra Booking Fee for Having a Long Last Name

posted by mrpg on Saturday May 12 2018, @01:32AM   
from the sorry-surnames-must-have-between-8-and-10-letters dept.

realDonaldTrump writes:

"A Thai Airways passenger said he was charged a $94 fee at the airport for a name change because the online booking system would not let him type his full name.

The passenger, whose name was not shared, said when he went to purchase his ticket on the Thai Airways website, his full last name would not fit in the name field. The name field only allows 25 characters for surname. The passenger tried shortening his name on the website and was finally able to buy tickets for himself and his family, the Bangkok Post reported."

Traveler charged extra booking fee for having a long last name

I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly.

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Original Submission

• Easily avoidable. Easily avoidable. (Score: 2) by Subsentient on Saturday May 12 2018, @05:30AM (5 children)

  by Subsentient (1111) on Saturday May 12 2018, @05:30AM (#678719) Homepage Journal

  There's a good chance this is a dynamic language running their software, in which case the name length limit is purely artificial. If not, even a char[64] would have likely provided more than enough room. 63 bytes of UTF-8. There is no good excuse for why the software is so limited. If I designed it, I would have used a char[256] just to be SURE, so incidents exactly like this, which is not the first of its kind I've seen, would never happen.

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  "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Starting Score:	1		point
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• Re:Easily avoidable. (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @06:56AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @06:56AM (#678737)

  Since all that likely matters is the contents of the passport data lines, don't make the name field shorter than that.

  Parent

• Re:Easily avoidable. Re:Easily avoidable. (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @11:58AM (3 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @11:58AM (#678788)

  I would have used a char[256] just to be SURE

  Seriously, how can you be sure there is not someone with a name that doesn't fit in there. I agree your solution gets you far, but unless there is worldwide a restriction in having names longer than a specific amount of characters you can never be completely sure.

  Parent

  • Re:Easily avoidable. Re:Easily avoidable. (Score: 2) by Subsentient on Saturday May 12 2018, @03:22PM (1 child)

    by Subsentient (1111) on Saturday May 12 2018, @03:22PM (#678848) Homepage Journal

    If your name is longer than 255 bytes, you need to rethink a lot of things. Most importantly, why you haven't changed it yet.

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    "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti

    Parent

    • Re:Easily avoidable. (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @12:52AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @12:52AM (#679380)

      Ditto if you are named as our similar to;
        # a German dictator who hated Jews
          # a Russian ruler who killed lots of people
        # a pedophile who declared himself a profit, killed those who would not join his religion
        # some person who may or may not have made the trains run on thyme
        # any one historic person known to be a complete bastard / rapist / murderer / dictator etc

      Parent

  • Re:Easily avoidable. (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @05:00AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @05:00AM (#679429)

    Easy fix. Keep the first 20 chars as plain text and MD5 sum the rest
    A Name is just an identifier right?

    Parent