> Also, not sure why you wouldn’t just use Base64 encoding for which optimised versions already exist instead of rolling your own conversion to/from base 26 (or 52).

It's mentioned in the article, but base64 includes weird characters that might not be allowed in a name field, like `+=/`. I also wouldn't be surprised if the airline name field didn't allow numbers.

Reminds me a bit of this post: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

"People’s names are not transport protocols"

Not to forget a stat about the number of "airline account name-change" e-mails sent to some (hopefully) junk e-mail account for each "name change". Ideally in relation to destination web-page design and amount of junk javascript embedded therein.

"several bytes per second"

I think the first terminal-to-host connection I used at university was 300bps. That's about 30 bytes a second, and watching the characters of a large block of text appear on screen, it did feel like I could almost count them as they went past.

So I can attest from personal experience that a double-digit number of bytes per second is enough to perform useful work, yes.