scottishpoet

The person who received the incorrect boarding pass would have seen "business class" and a seat number in business class. They probably, quite innocently, believed they had been upgraded and had access to the lounge.

abligh

Out of interest what does happen if there are two "John Smith"s on a flight, and the first to arrive goes to check in by hand with passport but no PNR with them? It can't be that uncommon. Do they check by DoB? What if both have the same DoB?

UKtravelbear

Appears some people are more concerned about the lounge aspects of this!

OP asked the question about apparent ‘improper access’ but did not say the staffer had actually got into the lounge using the erroneously issued BP they just assumed they did. And if they did get into the lounge there is an explanation for it - they had it by earning status - and would have got into the lounge anyway.

Actually I think the fact that it was a BA staffer is incidental and it was a attempt by BA to be open and honest about it with the OP.

As others have said this happens on occasion without the other party working for BA.

I do have one question though. Would the mislabelled bag have been pulled from the baggage system and then been retagged correctly ensuring the final manifests etc assigned the right bags to the right passengers?


still an interesting thread for a Sunday morning.

corporate-wage-slave

As I understand it, that would be done at the software end, so the tag on the bag stays the same, but the information held on the tag's barcode would have been repointed after the second check-in. The risk otherwise would be if the OP was travelling on further that the bag of the first passenger would have ended up goodness knows where. Which explains these occasional anecdotes of bags going to entirely the wrong place. As it happens, this may have been avoided if the OP and the first passenger were going to different locations. I suspect they were in fact just going to HKG, otherwise the check-in agent would almost certainly have said to the staff member "and your bag is checked in through to TOM".

marconess

Not BA but at GLA once I was issued with a boarding pass and told that next time I should use the Economy line rather than Business line. I didn't like the comment since I was booked in Business, a quick grab from the check-in agent and a swift apology and a change of the luggage tag before it went through the big black hole. Again, someone with the same surname as my (not so common) surname.

mctaste

op you cant imagine why a staff member would want lounge access?

SuperFuzz

I think they deserve some sort of lounge access, but I suppose they must have a staff lounge somewhere.

navylad

Many have lounge access in their own right through status, others are getting lounge access on staff travel as a reward for exceptional service. One of my partner cards this year went to an amazing friend who is a �staff member� who has been a great friend from school.

Fraser

I had this happen in CPT more than 10yrs ago now.

I was in 1A getting settled and one of the FAs come to my seat and asks to see my boarding pass and passport. A guy is waiting a few steps back and I see the FA has an exact duplicate of my boarding pass....my name, seat number, BAEC details, etc. Obviously they thought the 21yr old scally was trying to nick his F seat

I was rather surprised he had got through outbound passport control, into the lounge, and to the gate before he or someone else had noticed it! That day the Western Cape was an utter mess due to powercuts with the terminal in darkness so I guess if there was going to be a day something like this happens that was going to be it. The guy was reseated in, I think 5K.