was on the BA306 to CDG this morning and a colleague that I was sitting beside had a very interesting episode:

I travel fairly frequently, she much less so, but I encouraged her to check in online yesterday, and we both printed boarding passes.

All went ok, arrived at LHR, all ok through security with the printout, all ok boarding with the printout.

We get onto the plane and sit down. 5 mins later a crew member asks if he can see my companion's boarding pass. goes up to the front with it, and it seems obvious that there is a double booking of the seat - Man standing at the front looking gormless while FA's examine the manifests.

Flight is completely full, and so long story short, they ask someone to leave the flight (who I assume was a standby or staff) and we take off.

Shortly before landing a crew member comes to my companion and says
"You are lucky you got staying on this plane - your seat was showing empty on the system - we had to ask a staff member to leave the plane and give his seat to that other gentleman - and he was supposed to be in business"

My companion was dumbstruck, and I challenged the FA (not aggressively, more inquisitively) how that could have happened, I said surely if her seat had been allocated at the same time as me, there would be a problem with my seat two?

He then just said "Oh I know nothing about that kind of thing, I just hand out tea and coffee"

Aside from the fact that he made my companion feel like SHE had done something wrong and had denied someone else a seat, she is slightly worried about her flight back tomorrow.

I have told her not to worry, and that there is no way she would have got past security if there was a problem with her booking, but she is not convinced.

Has anyone else heard of this happening, and if they can shed any light on it I would appreciate it. If anything it makes me very wary of printing my on boarding pass in future

P