johngalt

Flying DL 745 DTW - SFO this morning. Full 767. With everyone boarded and the door closed, a woman walked to the front of the plane and said that she is supposed to be flying to SAN. Gate is called, bridge returned, door open, and she deplaned, then we shut the door and pushed back.

It seems surprising that the boarding pass scanner wouldn't have caught this, and then that on a full plane someone wasn't assigned to her same seat. Can this really happen?

TechMarauder

This happened to me on an AF flight from CDG-MUC last month. They were boarding 2 flights right next to each other at the same time. A lady that was supposed to be going to ATH came over to our line (AFTER BP was scanned in proper lane), proceeded to board, take a seat, etc. No one found out until the FA's did the count and noticed that we were 1 over on our flight. They checked on the adjacent flight and they were 1 under.. and presto, it's solved. Of course, this took 30 minutes and both planes were delayed because of the lady.

Needless to say... amazing as it sounds, it DOES happen. (Also happened to me at Gate 46 A/B at EWR. - I think they have since stopped boarding both at the same time)

sweeper20

I've seen it happen at Logan - on the RJ hallway. They do recheck your boarding pass before you walk out to the plane - but I've been on a plane where someone walked out of door 10A and not 10B and ended up on the wrong plane...

Stripe

I once successfully boarded an AA flight in AUS bound for LAX when my ticket was for a flight to DFW boarding at the same time at the adjacent gate. My BP beeped correctly and the GA noticed nothing. I became suspicious when I saw 3x3 seating and I thought I was flying on an MD-80. Fortunately someone was in my seat and I quickly determined I was on the wrong plane and was able to deplane before they shut the door. No one was able to explain why I was able to get on. And my BP also worked fine on the flight I was actually booked on.

PersonalFlotationDevice

In my experience most European flights (at least AF, KLM, BA, etc.) ask to see the boarding pass as you get on the plane--they are not looking at your name, just the destination.

teCh0010

I could see it happening at SLC.

MSPeconomist

I've seen it happen, both for mainline and for RJs where people walk or are bused to a cluster of baby airplanes parked on the tarmac.

If I'm jet lagged, running late, or not awake for a morning flight, I always verify the destination with FAs as I board. I've even heard the lead FA and pilot state the wrong destination during the pre-flight announcements, which sometimes leads to a big gasp and panic. One time someone even announced that we were about to land at the wrong airport.

My guess is that some of the problem is GAs not paying enough attention when then scan boarding passes, perhaps combined with passengers tending to race ahead to the jetway as soon as their boarding passes have been scanned. I say this because I notice GAs shockingly often not noticing the exit row alarm on the scanner and therefore failing to verify that people are exit row qualified. When I'm in an exit row, I volunteer that it's OK more often than not, and the GA usually looks a little surprised. When I notice during boarding that someone else is assigned to an exit row, it seems about 50-50 whether the GA notices or makes the required inquiries. It's worse on small RJs.

If the GA can miss the obvious exit row alert, I would guess that they can equally fail to notice or ignore an indication from the scanner than the passenger is boarding the wrong flight.

iflyalexair

I used to be a gate agent for US in TYS. I can remember on more than one occasion passengers coming up the jetbridge and asking me what city they were in. One time a passenger was flying something like BOS-DCA-GSO, but in DC, she boarded DCA-TYS. So, when she got to TYS, I had to reroute her TYS-CLT-GSO. If she were FT savy, she might have done it on purpose to get the extra segments. ;-D

It was most common from DCA with the whole 35A one gate for every flight boarding mess, but it happened from other cities too.

In TYS, we had three departures back to back in the afternoon, and we would use one gate for two of them. I remember many times a passenger would try to board the wrong flight and if you weren't really paying attention, you'd sometimes let a few slip buy. When our counts didn't match up, we'd figure it out. Of course, we didn't have boarding pass scanners. We did manual seat entry so if you waited to input the seats, you wouldn't catch the dupe seat or a seat assignment not actually assigned on the flight until you put it in.

If I qualified by segments for PM, I'd try a little more of this!

BobH

+1

Particularly with puddle jumpers --- there or at JFK.

Bob H

vgb2001

It did happened to me in SLC. Was supposed to board an RJ to MSO, got on the plane and realized when i was about to seat that I had boarded the wrong one. Did not look very proud when I walked back outside

BHArt

Habit can make you a victim as well. I once successfully got on SAN-DTW when my routing was SAN-MSP-DTW on PMNW. The SAN-MSP at 14:00 was reliably and always at gate 24 at SAN, so I plopped myself there as usual, GA made an announcement about 13:30 apologizing for a delay and I figured since the plane wasn't at the gate yet we'd be 10-20 behind. Apparently the announcement was for the outbound to DTW which was originally supposed to be arriving around 11:30 and turning right back. I marched up still suspecting nothing and not reading the board, scanner buzzed, GA called the actual MSP gate which had just pushed out of gate 25, but she had seats and after inquiring as to my final of DTW she put me on there. I did get full Y credit and extra EQM for the flight so I came out ahead in miles and in time with the direct but it was all entirely unintentional as I was just in my usual habit.

sbagdon

I did this way back when they used punchcard stock (like how CHI subways work?). ATL-MIA and ATL-FLL boarded at gates next to each other, and would fly whichever was cheaper, yet one week the mistake was made. They took the stock, ran it through, and let me board. Took some persuasion, yet they saw the error in their ways (um... did you do a head count?!), and they paid for ground transport MIA-FLL (had to pick up the car).

Sure it happened all the time, in CVG.

komalkks

Did u getr mileage credit for bith flights

Detroiter

Haven't seen it happen on a flight I've been on since the Dark Ages (early 80's, when your boarding pass was a ticket jacket with the flight # and destination written on, and the seat assignment was a sticker obtained at the gate). I was flying DTW-PHL to visit my parents in South Jersey for Christmas, and NW had flights to PHL and DCA (and probably LGA and BOS as well) leaving from their then home in the A concourse at DTW at around the same time. In those days you didn't hear the periodic announcements of the flight number and destination during boarding, so the first announcement was at the beginning of the safety demonstration after we had begun taxiing. "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to welcome you to Northwest flight xxx to Philadelphia."

At just that moment there was a clear disturbance in the Force towards the back of the plane. About a minute later the pilot came on the PA, "Well, folks, it seems we have a couple of passengers here who want to go to Washington-National rather than Philadelphia, so we're going to go back to the gate and let them off, then we'll be on our way."

Now this was a Friday evening just before the holidays, so the flight had a fairly large number of business travelers who were not amused by the delay. Let's just say there was a heap of abuse piled on the two fairly elderly ladies who came shuffling up the aisle when we returned to the gate.

patrickATX

I did it once on AA at DFW several years ago. Late flight in, very tired. Waiting for my flight to board and was watching a movie on my laptop, not paying attention. They started boarding, I got on the plane. I am dozing pretty well while waiting to leave. As we are about to takeoff, pilot does an announcement that we were 2nd to take off and would be in San Antonio in about 35-40 minutes. Unfortunately, I was heading to Austin. It was too late to say anything, but afterwards I found out they moved the Austin flight two gates down while I was tuned out and I was not nearly aware enough to notice I boarded the wrong flight.

I did a one-way car rental to Austin and just added it to my expense report.

On a side note that is kinda related, I was once on a flight (AA again) where two people got combative with the flight crew when they found out the flight was to Ontario California, not Ontario, Canada. Unfortunately, we had already taken off. We had to land in El Paso to let off (and arrest) the passengers in question.