ESTA with a hyphenated surname

[rambocat1974]

Morning all

Bit of a strange one, but I'm travelling in July with me niece who as the title suggests, has a hyphenated surname.

Her passport shows the hyphen, but the BA booking does not, apparently their system won't allow it.

My question is, does the ESTA website allow a hyphen to be input and if so, should the ESTA name match her passport with hyphen, or the BA booking without?

Any advice from people with experience would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Rob

[loldis]

ESTA should always match your passport rather than booking, as this is what they will be referencing for immigration purposes.

[Mr Tom Morrow]

My Granddaughter has a hyphenated Surname.

In order to be sure I have dug out her ESTA and yes her name is on there as hyphenated. The same as her Passport.

With regards to Airline tickets the 2 x Surnames merge in to one long Surname albeit it looks ridiculous but that is their system.

[rambocat1974]

Originally Posted by Mr Tom Morrow

My Granddaughter has a hyphenated Surname.

In order to be sure I have dug out her ESTA and yes her name is on there as hyphenated. The same as her Passport.

With regards to Airline tickets the 2 x Surnames merge in to one long Surname albeit it looks ridiculous but that is their system.

See more...

Thanks for the information!
R

[Fluffypenguin]

I used to work for BA (but in the avios department) and the system just doesn’t physically allow us to put hyphens.

As others have said though, this is a known thing and as long as the passport and esta matches, you’ll be fine.

[TeeKayDawn]

Make sure the Esta matches the passport.
I think its common to remove the hyphen for the booking as we always have this problem regardless of whether we’re travelling to the US, Europe or other place, and whether airline is/was TC, VA, BA, EasyJet, RyanAir etc.
Even now we still question bookings when my partners name has the hyphen removed and get told its because the system doesn’t accept characters 😁

[Welshjim22]

Look at the bottom of your passport page where the machine readable zone is. Is the hyphen there? This is how passports are read in many places. Especially when passport chips are so easily broken.

It's highly unlikely to make a difference either way. It will most likely link your esta to your passport number more than name, when scanned on arrival. As there can often be multiple people with same name or dob, but shouldn't be more than one match for a document number and nationality.

My friend in Border Force tells me that's how the passenger locator form works when we travel.

Does the esta page not give advice? I know the advice from the UK government for applying for electronic visas is to include all punctuation.

[AdmiralJack]

I have a friend who always has this problem. He just gives up and does the first part of his surname as a middle name and never has a problem., although I don't think he has a middle name or else it might get difficult

[Tomsk]

My daughter has a hyphenated name, booking her name onto flights with virgin is always fun as they remove the hyphen and put her names together, we always match her name on her passport for the ESTA and never had any issues at all.