Reagon, Reagoon, whatever.

Mrs. SHIB was coming back from a business conference in LAS, on a 7:00 AM flight when the PAX in 34D, on a plane departing from gate D34, finally realized he was on the wrong plane when the legitimate occupant of 34D showed up.

How do these folks get past the scanner at the gate?

The same way that old senile people who are too handicapped to board the flight and find their way to their seat without assistance remain seated in exit rows: the scanner beeps and the GA ignores it rather than paying attention.

Kinda like the couple from England who thought they scored a great fare to Sydney in Australia a few years back, and when they got off the plane they were a little surprised how quick they arrived.

Arrived they did, at Sydney, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia :p :eek: Well it turns out they were at the right airport, just not the one down under :rolleyes:

EmailKid

It's called alert fatigue. Consider for a moment how many times the scanner beeps. Now think about how many times it's actually a problem.

When the scanner complains 100x as often as there is a legitimate problem, the GA is going to start ignoring it.

And there is a non-stop flight from San Jose CA to San Jose Costa Rica :D

I prefer getting on the Triborough Bridge to Idlewild than taking the RFK to JFK.

Does the scanner complain 100x as often as there is a problem....? Not in my experience. The scanner beeps every time a BP is scanned, it makes a slightly different noise if the BP is for an exit row and an entirely different noise it their is a problem, which happens occasionally. The GA didn't ignore the entirely different noise, he just screwed up how he handled it either through apathy or something else, but most definitely no type of fatigue was involved.... :D

Anyway, why does there have to be a conditional excuse for it?, the GA was just not doing his job. He didn't look harassed, he wasn't being rushed or there wasn't any particular drama with the flight. He just didn't take the time to do his job right. Simple.

I did almost book a flight from ATL to DXB rather than DUB once, but caught it because I noticed the times looked wrong and double checked it. It would have been called DAS (dumb ... syndrome) if I actually ended up in DXB....

I was in line at the gate once and the guy in front of me suddenly jumped out of line with a panicked look on his face -- our flight was going to Washington "Dulles" and he wanted to go to "Dallas." Regional accents probably had something to do with that :)

And 30+ years ago I got excited when my boss told me I might have to go to Melbourne -- was disappointed to find out he meant MLB not MEL :)

True, that "Dulles" and "Dallas" are WAY too similar. They should have named IAD - "Reagan", and left DCA - "National". It was perfectly fine - as is! :)

In your horse and buggy?

I saw a pax make that realization on an AA Eagle at DFW. She was sitting in the 1A seat facing the FA. The FA said "welcome to Flight # xxxx to Fayetteville, AR." The pax's eyes got really big. She said, "S**t, you're not going to Baton Rouge?":confused: The FA said no and immediately called the captain and told him to "shut it down! We have a pax on the wrong flight." They got her off and away we went.

Before they built XNA and we flew into FYV, we had many young GIs get off the plane and ask how they could get to Fort Bragg.:(

Then there's the old story of the newlyweds all excited about their London honeymoon ... until they landed in London, Ontario!

For a honeymoon, did really matter where they were?

Not quite the same thing, but I once flew as a space-a passenger on a Navy
C-9 originating at ADW (Andrews AFB just outside of D.C.). In the terminal, the flight board showed this aircraft going to NGU (NAS Norfolk, VA), only a short hop away.

After the doors were closed, the loadmaster began his safety briefing, saying "Welcome to mission # xxxx to NAS Norfolk, with intermediate stops at Malmstrom AFB, MT and NAS Memphis, TN. Enroute time to Norfolk will be approximately nine hours."

With that, some old retiree jumped out of his seat and began screaming to be let off...he had not known about the intermediate stops. Unfortunately for him, he was ordered back into his seat and was with us for the duration. And we ended up making an extra stop at Ellsworth AFB, SD for fuel.

Listening to the old guy grumble for hours made for some amusement during the long day.