Woman Clears Security, Boards American Airlines Flight With Wrong Boarding Pass
Jeff Edwards December 04, 2015
ROME - APRIL 11: Passengers board American Airlines Boeing 767 at Fiumicino Airport on April 11, 2012 in Rome. With 106 million passengers carried in 2011, American Airlines is the 5th largest airline worldwide.
A female American Airlines passenger who was inadvertently issued a boarding pass intended for a male passenger managed to pass through a TSA checkpoint and board her plane without being challenged.
An American Airlines passenger was able to pass through the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) checkpoint and board her flight at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), even though her boarding pass was printed with another passenger’s name on it. The security failure was not discovered until after LaShonda Traylor boarded the plane and checked her seat assignment, only to realize her ticket had been issued in the name of a male passenger with the last name of Taylor.
“I’m a female, he’s a male, and it was just … our names are somewhat similar but they weren’t similar enough to get that mixed up,” Traylor told Dallas/Fort Worth Fox affiliate KDFW.
American Airlines officials told reporters that procedures and crosschecks in place would have prevented the aircraft from leaving the gate until all passengers on board were accounted for, even if Traylor had not reported the mistake in ticketing. A TSA spokesman told Fox News that both Traylor and her luggage were properly screened, but the agency is investigating the lapse in document verification procedures.
For her part, Traylor would like to see the incident serve as “a wake-up call” both for passengers like herself and those charged with keeping the public safe. “I just hate to see people get in trouble. To me, maybe it won’t be a reprimand, maybe it’ll just be more education about risk factors and promoting safety,” she said. “I’m hoping that will be the outcome of it.”
The November 30 incident comes on the heels of a bizarre incident in October in which a registered sex offender managed to pass through a TSA checkpoint at Salt Lake City International using a ticket stolen from an automated ticketing kiosk. The man was not challenged at security despite the fact that the boarding pass he presented to checkpoint workers was clearly labeled as belonging to a female passenger.
[Photo: Getty]
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Who cares? The woman and her belongings were screened, just as the TSA said so in this article. If you have a gun in your carry-on, the X-ray will see it regardless of what your boarding pass says and whether it's yours or not. I can't stand it when these events are called "security failures" when they are NOT!
More reasons to disband the TSA.
Had something similar happen years ago. This was after 9/11 but when ID and BP were still being checked both at security and at the gate. So a TSA person and the GA both supposedly looked at my ID and BP. I didn't really pay attention to my BP - routine flight I took all the time. Not until a man came on board and said I was in his seat, did it come to light. Same last names, same gender - completely different first names. Luckily it got sorted out as the plane was full and, technically, I hadn't checked in and arrived at the gate on time.
A lot of these issues are probably due to non native English speakers doing the screening. I know when I'm in other countries I often can't tell which gender the names belong to - so I can see not picking up on a male/female name difference. That, of course, doesn't explain the apparent inability of the screeners to read correctly.
Lashanda, you're comments are way off. Why didn't you look at the boarding pass when they handed it to you? You want someone else punished for you're lack of oversight?