nk15

Maybe that was the plan all along. He somehow obtains OP's BP, boards the aircraft, goes to the lav, and implants harmful device (or around OP's seat). Then the OP shows up, they figure out the mix up, impostor leaves the plane safely. Airport security underreacts and does not search the plane, plane takes off and the rest will be in the news.

If this was a dummy run, it shows this will work.

LondonAussie

Sorry was not commenting on the OP case, was responding to the previous few posts about people accidentally waking the wrong way at a split gate and boarding the wrong flight.
I will update my post to include a quote to avoid confusing people.

RichieMc

And this whole dastardly plot depends on the million-to-one chance that the interloper is able to get the BP of the person in the exact same seat number on a different flight. AAAAAnd it assumes that he was able to get a harmful device past security in the first place. Would be much easier to just go onto the flight he has an actual reservation for, leave the harmful device on the plane when he gets off in London, and "the rest will be in the news" as you say. he could also just get himself offloaded from his actual flight and stay in Amsterdam if he'd prefers to be arrested by Dutch authorities rather than British ones.

Ghoulish

According to the recent thread about BA FAs refusing to clean the lavs, and the poor toilet habits are some pax, it would appear there's an epidemic of harmful substances already being deposited in aircraft bathrooms.

Flyertalker001342

The problem is that the wording on the lav signs is being taken literally. The signs say not to put anything down the toilets except for the toilet paper.

Captain Schmidt

I have been on many flights when an announcement has been made along the lines of "If a Mr/Mrs/Dr ABC/XYZ etc is on-board, would they please make themselves known to the crew." I'm always ever slightly concerned that said airline (and it's been a few different airlines) has seemingly no idea whether an individual boarded or not.

Flyertalker001342

I think this happens when a customer who has checked in for a flight doesn't board the airplane, shortly before the doors are closed. In that situation the airline would generally need to remove that passenger's bags from the hold, which is time consuming & a real pain in the

It isn't that the airline thinks that the passenger has boarded; they think he or she has NOT and they want to confirm that before going to the step of searching for and removing bags from the hold.

tjcxx

This doesn't fully make sense. If a passenger responds to the announcement, that proves the passenger IS aboard. If no passenger responds, that does not prove the passenger IS NOT aboard. Passenger might not have heard, or understood, the announcement.

layz

If they don't respond their baggage is offloaded. I remember one time at T5 someone decided to skip past the gate agent when the gate agent was dealing with someone else. The gate agent hadn't noticed so I had to say something. It's feels odd having to do that but I knew we could end up with a needlessly delayed flight if I hadn't said something also the passenger could find their remaining booking cancelled if this was the outward leg.

Greenpen

Happened to me once and it was because they wanted to give me a bottle of champagne from F while I was roughing it in Y.

Bram

I’ve had this happen to me, about 15 years ago flying AA YYZ-LGA.

This was before web check in was permitted ex-YYZ, some confused looks when I went to the counter, but was handed my BP. At the gate, the reader beeps and states Already Boarded, but waved through anyway. Onboard, had a preferred seat at the front of AA main cabin, and I find a kindly looking older woman sitting there. I approach and ask her where she is seated, and I’m starting to tell her that she should stay where she is and I would take her seat, my good deed for the day. She pulls out her BP and I see that it bears the number of the seat she is in, because it is in fact MY BP. We turn out to have the same surname, and check in had handed her a BP with my (very obviously male) first name, not bothering to check that they had 2 pax with the same surname on the flight.

At this point, the unwitting seat poacher is very embarrassed, it seems like she felt she had done something wrong or stupid, which was not the case, but she gets very flustered and insists on moving a few rows back to a vacant seat. I try to explain to her that she needs to speak to the gate agent, because I’m thinking that they’ll cancel any remaining segments and offload her bags (if those are in her name), but I think she just feels embarrassed and wants to make no fuss, so she just goes and sits down. Ultimately, I decided to ring the call bell and ask the FA to notify the GA, it’s pretty clear this nice lady has no idea how much trouble can come from being a technical no show, and if the crew took a headcount and it was off we could be delayed for hours. GA came on and spoke to me and said it would be sorted, I felt a bit like a tattletale though, I’m sure the woman is behind me thinking I am “telling” on her.

The interesting thing is that this is YYZ, with US preclearance, and I think in those days the US official would stamp the BP to show the pax was cleared. So, on an intl flight with passport required, this pax sailed through check in, security, US preclearance, and the second passport inspection at the gate, all with a BP in the wrong name and gender, and both she and all the relevant personnel were oblivious.

The lucky thing is that she was going to NYC. She could just as easily have been heading to ORD, and gone to the gate printed on the BP they gave her without checking the screens. That would have been a real mess, particularly as she had checked bags.

Fraser

I had this very thing happen on a CPT-LHR about 15 years ago.

Check-in was a nightmare due to a power outage across the Western Cape and the whole check-in area was in darkness but we eventually boarded the aircraft. I was in row 1 with my companion (747 *sob*) and an FA approached me and asked for my boarding pass. I could see they had an identical boarding pass to mine with my seat number, name, FF details etc. A much older was rather sheepishly hovering a few feet behind. I was fairly certain they assumed me, being in my early 20s, had pinched this guy's boarding pass so I grabbed my passport too and held them together. Am not sure what transpired but I later saw the guy sat towards the back of the F cabin.

I was rather surprised that he was able to clear exit immigration, security and board the aircraft without anyone picking up on this but assumed amongst the chaos of the whole situation that anything was skipped over. I'd be hugely surprised if he had the same name as me...whilst my surname is quite common my first is not.

chessman

Some years ago I was flying domestically from ORD with my dad. I had printed multiple copies of each boarding pass and accidentally gave him a copy of mine, rather than his. TSA missed it entirely (despite different first names) and the it only got caught at boarding because the barcode had already been scanned once.

HadesNL

Maybe...
An inside job ?
or just gross neglect...

What a startling story!

A reason i hammer to my kids never to send/post their boardingpass/pnr/barcode via app/socials ....

Luther.e

Although still not a foolproof system, the gate agents usually check the assigned seat for the pax as well. It’s always slightly concerning when they believe someone hasn’t boarded, make the announcement and someone says that’s them.