I've seen that forever and not just on United. I have thought it's something about the underlying SABRE system that many airlines use. Maybe someone here knows more.

Happens to me as well. My first, second and last names are quite short, five letters each. So my guess is that’s it’s related to that.

Maybe there’s simply the COBOL equivalent of the following somewhere:

  if len(first) + len(second) + len(last) <= MAX_LEN_ON_TICKET:
    first_name_on_ticket = first + second

I've asked ChatGPT for the COBOL equivalent... and it's 18 lines

I can tell you from personal experience that if you have four names it will turn "First Second Third Last" into "Firstsecondthird Last" (I usually fly Delta).

I asked a checkin agent to fix it but they said it will start rejecting my ID if they change it at all.

On British airways (and I believe other ticket systems that use Amadeus), I often get LastnameTitleFirstnameSecondname all as one word (in caps). It certainly looks funny on the boarding pass, but I've never had any issue getting through security.

Names with hyphens are also contracted by SABRE... Subname-Subname becomes Subnamesubname.

> I've seen that forever and not just on United. I have thought it's something about the underlying SABRE system that many airlines use. Maybe someone here knows more.

I don't remember the precise details, but some airline website's password had restrictions at one point that made it super-obvious that they were internally converting alphanumeric passwords to digits based on the US telephone key mapping.

I remember thinking at the time it might ultimately have been due to SABRE (because I believe that's literally one of the oldest computer system still in use), and screen-scraping some telephone menu system depressingly seems like something someone would do for expediency.

I wouldn't be surprised if a system like that also mangles names.

Fidelity does this as well:

> Usernames and passwords containing letters need to be translated to numbers to enter them in a Fidelity phone system (like FAST, or if you call a representative). Use your telephone keypad to convert the letters to numbers. There is no case sensitivity. Substitute an asterisk (*) for all special characters. https://www.fidelity.com/customer-service/need-help-logging-...