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I am planning to visit the US on an F1 visa and need to book tickets for the same. My passport (and all my other documents) only have a single name. My name on my (Indian) passport appears as follows:

  • Surname:______
  • Given Name: MYNAME

After some research, I found that for such a case, the F1 visa that is issued will have my name mentioned as:

  • Surname: MYNAME
  • Given Name: FNU

My question is, what would be the correct way to fill in my name when booking my ticket?

KVYA
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1 Answers1

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Indeed, FNU is what you should put down.

Here's a tweet as an example from Westjet:

If you have no surname you would put all given names in the last name field and "FNU" in the first name field. Happy booking!

Etihad has this to say on booking policies:

Enter the given name in the last name field and enter the given name as FNU (First Name Unknown)

You will notice these two are the same guidance both matching the format in your question. It is indeed the same for every major airline you will encounter. Footnote for the persnickety: the technical term is "all airlines which use a GDS", exceptions are super rare, for example Allegiant Air in the US is one but they are domestic only.

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    Airlines that don't use a GDS are pretty common among the low cost market. Neither of the major European low costs airlines, Ryanair and Easyjet are on any GDS. – user1937198 May 09 '22 at 19:33
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    https://www.easyjet.com/ejcms/cache/medialibrary/files/travel%20agent%20online%20guides/en/sabre –  May 09 '22 at 20:10
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    Because I'm curious more than anything: what is a 'GDS' as mentioned in your footnote? – Roddy of the Frozen Peas May 09 '22 at 20:56
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    @RoddyoftheFrozenPeas A Global Distribution System for tickets. – Matthew May 09 '22 at 22:18
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    I'd guess FNU stands for "First Name Unused" or Unknown or Unstated ? What happens if someone's real first name is Fnu ? Does it go like a car with licence plate none or blank or NA ? – Criggie May 10 '22 at 00:55
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    Not much happens. At worst you have a name collision but that's not worse than two John Smith flying on the same plane. Keep an eye on the goal: a human sees a passport and needs to find a record in a database. –  May 10 '22 at 01:25
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    @Criggie - are those as bad as using NULL? – Hannover Fist May 10 '22 at 05:14
  • @HannoverFist from memory the guy who registered a car with a plate like "blank" started getting speeding/red light camera fines in the mail from that date onward. Not sure of the exact details, sorry. – Criggie May 10 '22 at 09:26
  • I confirmed the same from the Etihad helpline and they directed me to use "FNU' as my first name. I couldn't find any clear instructions for Emirates or Qatar. I also check for AirIndia and they require the same name to be repeated in both fields: https://www.airindia.in/new-correct-name-bookings.htm P.S. For all my domestic flights, I have repeated by name in both fields and never had any problems. – KVYA May 10 '22 at 14:08
  • https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/india-based-airlines/1849396-air-india-fnu-name-issue.html while Air India indeed directs you to do this, they also accept FNU -- they must because they are part of this much larger system and a travel agent might book a ticket on multiple airlines where one is requiring FNU and a ticket can't be on multiple names. It's possible even some call center representatives do not know this but the airport personnel must. One airline does not, can not make rules on its own when it's part of an alliance. –  May 11 '22 at 00:40