I’ve started using my middle name when booking travel, and it seems to be helping when it comes to printing my boarding pass. Earlier this week, I was able to print my boarding pass from home for my flight to San Jose. I didn’t want to get too excited, it could have just been a glitch. I was flying a different airline from a different airport.  I flew Southwest  rather than my preferred airline, JetBlue, since I had to get to Santa Cruz, and JetBlue does not fly to San Jose (the closest airport to Santa Cruz), or at least not when I needed to go. This also means I flew out of Orange County instead of Long Beach, so I had an all around new No-Fly Watch List experience.

From Santa Cruz I drove to San Francisco to work out of the office for a day. When I tried to print my boarding pass for my flight home from SFO, it worked! Except for the minor detail that I was in my hotel room and did not have a printer, but I am confident that it will work when I get to the office. Could this mean I am no longer on the No-Fly Watch List? I hope so, although I was just starting to get used to the inconvenience. Plus my sister and her husband, a retired US Army Colonel, sent me an article, “Behind the Scenes: Crafting the US No-Fly Watch List,” and after reading it I was beginning to feel all important.

I am (or maybe now I can say was) among only two percent of people on the list who are US citizens. And I am (or was) one of 418,000 people in the Terrorist Screening Database and only one of 18,000 people selected for extra screening. This seems like an elite club of sorts. 18,000 people is not that many in the scheme of things. I was never denied a boarding pass or kept from flying which means I am not actually one of the 6,000 people on the No-Fly List. These people are not allowed to board planes. They are the super elite in the No-Fly Watch List community. Kind of like reverse Platinum Status.

Everything was looking good until I tried to plan ahead for my Spring travel. I may be able to print boarding passes, but I cannot seem to book flights anymore. Now why didn’t they think of this sooner? Forget about the No-Fly Watch List. If you’re on the list, they should just cut you off before the boarding pass and not even let you book a flight.  The No-Book Flight List.

I kept getting an error message when I tried booking my flight. When I called JetBlue to speak to an operator, she said, “I’ll have to charge you $15 to book it over the phone.”

“Umm, excuse me?” This was not going to work for me. “Since I can’t book it on the website, can you waive the fee?” I thought this was a reasonable request.

“No,” she said. “We haven’t had any complaints about the website.”I guess my problem did not rank as complaint status.

“So can you tell me what I’m supposed to do? You’re website doesn’t let me book the flight, so you’re going to charge me extra to do it over the phone?” I needed to speak to her leader. When I got the leader on the phone she was finally able to help me, but it sure did take a while.

Did I say JetBlue was my preferred airline? I may need to update that status.