HofstraJet

josmul123

They'll figure it out even if they forget. Their counts will be off, and they'll go through every seat trying to figure out who they're missing. Or they'll ask you to ring your call button to make sure you're on board. I'd put the chances of them forgetting to board you somewhere between nonexistent and winning the lottery.

As for the actual question being asked, I'd suppose if you tried to board the connection without "boarding" the initial flight, it would already have been cancelled, but maybe others on the board would know with more certainty.

Often1

Weight and balance considerations require that the passenger count match. It would take both the GA forgetting to mark you as boarded and the FA doing the passenger count omitting a passenger in order for the passenger count to match.

As to how long, that is a good question. There are people who report that it has happened to them within seconds of the flight closing.

ashill

Well, in principle, it's not hard to have offsetting off-by-one errors in the passenger count. They miss one boarding pass, but then another person scans on but ducks off for some reason and gets missed. Highly unlikely and it doesn't happen often, but I'm a little surprised that it's something I've essentially never seen reported here; I'd think it would happen at least sometimes. I can't think of any AA stations like this, but especially operations where boarding gates lead to many planes, like the Horizon gates at SEA. I would think that it wouldn't be all that unusual for one Pasco passenger to get on the Wenatchee plane while one Wenatchee passenger gets on the Pasco plane. Or one person on the Pasco flight isn't scanned (like the OP is afraid of) while one Wenatchee passenger gets on the Pasco flight. Wenatchee would have a problem, but they might not notice until Pasco is gone.

But again, experience is pretty clear: airlines are pretty careful about who is on their flights for all sorts of reasons (from revenue to security to safety), and they don't flub this up often at all.

LINDEGR

Yes, there are certainly stories abound of people flying to the wrong place!

mvoight

Or, an FA not fudging it so the count matches to avoid hassles

OskiBear

HofstraJet

JJeffrey

If your ticket is cancelled because AA thinks you're a no-show (or you no-show'd on a previous flight thus cancelling the rest of the itinerary) then you typically will not receive any email or other notification from AA.

If you happen to have booked the ticket through an OTA or other travel agent then sometimes you will get a notification from them once the cancellation fully flows through the system, but not directly from AA.

USFlyerUS

This might help: If you go to prefunds.aa.com/refunds, select Request a Receipt and enter the ticket number/last name, you'll be able to see what coupon(s) were used. Presumably, if your check-in was cancelled due to a no show, the coupon(s) in question would not say "USED" as the system does when you fly a segment, and I'm guessing future coupon(s) would no longer say "OK". Note that I've never tested what happens on a no show, so whether "USED" or "OK" is changed to something else is not guaranteed, just something to consider.

nismo240ssx

It's happened to me where the BP wasn't scanned on leg 1 and somehow the count was correct. I arrived at CLT knowing nothing BP didn't scan for the second leg and the GA quickly resolved this.