At least you were not going to Sydney

I think I would have noticed the non MD-XX plane. Not sure their range is quite good enough.

I am just glad it was not a flight to somewhere like Ohio or Oklahoma. I think then I would have said something.

I was doing DL LGA/RSW last year and we were bused from the terminal to a bunch of parked RJs on the field. I was first off the bus but there were several waiting a/c with doors open and the driver never indicated which a/c (although he could have after I left the bus.) To be sure (I was also the first on the a/c) I asked the FA if this a/c was going to RSW. So in situations like this I can see it happening. A normal gate boarding not so much.

Not anymore with AF and KL on its European flights.

Two weeks ago I was on a DL flight YYZ to DTW and thee were two pacs on board with the same seat assignment and the FA was not phased by that. The GA
was a bit more concerned, but they just reassigned one of the pacs and blaned the gate scanner.

This happened on my ATL-MSP flight last month. A guy got on board sat down, then when the FA's did the "welcome to flight..." announcement he got up and said he was supposed to be on the flight to Washington.

This was a typical one gate, one jetway, one airplane situation. So like the OP asked, how does this happen with the boarding pass scanners?

Last month, I got on my DTW-LAS flight, and saw that the flight attendants fairly tanned, with great happy smiles. One of them were wearing a Lei (those Hawaiian flower necklace). I secretly hoped that I somehow got on the wrong plane and is heading to Hawaii instead of Vegas.... Unfortunately, after they closed the door and made the pre-flight announcement, they confirmed we were going to Las Vegas... However, thats not what this thread is about.

I've also seen multiple times people who got on the wrong flight and didn't find out until they're physically on the plane. I suspect the bar-code on the boarding pass doesn't contain a lot of information other than name and seat number... Perhaps someone smart enough to know bar-code can figure it out...

On a similar topic, I've sometimes scan the wrong boarding pass (unintentionally) to a flight (used the later connecting flight's boarding pass), and always got red-buzzed.

There was a famous case in the news a few years ago of someone boarding a plane to--and arriving in--Ackland when they wanted to go to Oakland, which was a short distance from where they started. Apparently it was something in the accent that was making the announcements versus their own pronunciation of the two cities that caused the problem.

From those days I remember signs next to the stairs indicating the destination of a plane.

Somewhat like the signs next to the doors of some trains.

This would be useful now in some airports where there are a bunch of RJs parked together.

I would imagine it also contains date and flight number information via the confirmation number? But sometimes, when the BP doesn't scan properly, they'll just look at the seat number and enter it manually. This may be an issue for some of the wrong-flight boardings.

It definitely can happen at the Delta Bus Depot (Gawd I hate that place).

MO

Happend to me a couple of months ago on ATL-SAT. My inbound was supposed to be late but catched up lots of time and we had no issues with that gate. I rushed over and boarded with my AF-issued BP. I was upgraded T-7 so seat was 3A. The machine beeped, showed my name and seat number (as encoded in the 2D barcode) - all good. However, my seat was already occupied. The GA who investigated confirmed that I was moved to a later flight.

I remember hearing stories about that happening pretty often at JAX back in the day. US used to park four to six DHC-8-100/200s outside of a gate at the end of the concourse for the tag routes they'd run (JAX-XXX-CLT) each morning. Because they parked all the aircraft next to each other and boarded simultaneously (all flights would typically leave between 6:00 AM-6:15 AM), it was not unusual to have people doing the plane-to-plane shuffle before rolling out.

I shouldn't admit this, but it actually happened to me.

I was flying between Indianapolis and MSP, I checked the gate assignment after I checked in at security, when I got the gate and even over the entry door, every check showed the gate as being the correct one for MSP. I boarded the plane that Delta indicated was going to MSP (after of course being checked in by Delta team) and when I sat in my seat as we were getting ready to depart they announced the 'short flight to DTW', I panicked. Checked with fellow flyers and we were indeed headed to DTW not MSP. I alerted the FA, was escorted off the plane and then was able to board my correct flight.

Ridiculous but true....perhaps a blonde moment....or as I prefer to think of it ineptitude in signage in every step of the journey.

I boarded the wrong flight once, traveling from PHL to ORD via CVG about 5 years ago, they were boarding the ORD segment and another flight through one gate at CVG, when you got to the bottom of the stairs the covered walkway split in two directions, my luck I picked left instead of right. I get on the plane, take my seat, and before they close the door they announce the flight is going to LEX. Yikes! I go up to the front of the plane, explain what happened, the pilot called operations and had them bring the ORD flight (which had just pushed back), to return to the gate, he then went into the cargo hold, found my carry-on bag for me, and walked me over to the correct flight. Amazing customer service! I got the pilots name and wrote a very nice letter to DL thanking him. It was the most embarrassing flight in my 30 years of travel; needless to say there were not too many friendly faces on my fellow passengers on either aircraft. I did notice that a few weeks later they started checking boarding passes at certain airports when you got on the RJs, I guess they enacted the BergerPHL rule.