Wrong seat, wrong flight, wrong destination
 

This happened 2 weeks back, flying ATL to IAD.

A woman about 4 or 5 ahead of me was boarding and the scanner burped when her boarding pass was scanned. The GA tried it again, same result, so he went to his computer and came back to her, handed her the boarding pass and told her to board. Then he grabbed the phone, called someone and said something along the lines of I need Delta techs here, the scanner is screwed up.

So I get to the scanner, scans my BP and it burps, message on the screen says "already on board" - he looks at me and said, "but you already boarded...." (I swear:)) to which I reply "actually I'm didn't - i'm right here" - so he does another scurry to the computer, comes back and tells me to go ahead and board but asks me to do him a favor and have one of the FA's call him.....

I get on, tell the first FA I meet to call the GA, then head for my seat. I get to my seat and it has a handbag and a laptop case on it. I clearly see a boarding pass on top of the handbag with the same seat number as mine. The guy in the seat next to my seat tells me that she ran to the rest room.

So we both chat for a minute about how the seats got screwed up and I look at her BP more closely and see DCA on it...

Woman arrives back, I explain the situation, she gets a bit shirty BUT seems she doesn't realize there are two airports in DC (when I ask her which airport in DC she is going to she says "why does it matter") Right around this point the FA comes to get her telling her she is on the wrong flight.

No big deal, but I am really puzzled as to how a) she didn't check the destination or the flight number AND b) how on earth did the GA not spot the problem when she tried to board. Its not like the boarding system didn't tell him.

Just proves that you can have all the systems in place but if humans decide to ignore...

Wrong seat, wrong flight, wrong destination
 

The GA just looked at the seat number and let her board. She/He should have looked at the name that comes up when entering manually, but I guess was too busy.

The GA was being careless. Fortunately the mistake was caught before the flight departed. What's the point of having boarding pass scanners if GAs just ignore the warnings that something is wrong?

Perhaps the GAs have just as much trust in Delta IT as the flyers do. ;)

One thing that can cause this type of situation is when people go to the seat/row number for their flight because of the way concourses are identified at most large airports.

Bob H

No, it was a careless GA. It really can't be that hard to see that names and destinations don't match, even if the seat # does. Missing 2 out of 3 is being nothing but extremely lazy.

This happened to me at IAH on CO before the merger. I arrived on the plane to find another pax in my seat. I called a FA right away. Right seat; wrong flight. He was redirected off the plane to his correct flight. Wheew.

The funny thing (or not so funny) would have been if the flight was not full & no one else was assigned that seat. This woman would not have known she was on the wrong plane till she got off & IAD. I can just imagine the blame going back & fourth. She would have blamed DL for letting her board the wrong flight (and she would be right) but DL would have blamed her for being a dumb b... (& they would also be right). Takes 2 to tango :rolleyes:

She sounds so clueless that as long as she arrived in the correct metropolitan area she would never have known the difference. "It seemed like an extra long taxi trip from the airport this time!":D

If she checked a bag, trying to file the lost luggage claim form at the wrong airport could be interesting.

Yeah - my buddy and I where laughing about it, what if someone was picking her up.... how long would have been before they realized they were at different airports 20 miles apart :)

On cell phones...

"but i am standing at the curb outside arrivals.."
"you can't be, I drove by 6 times - what airport are you at?"
"I'm at DCA, I told you I got on the flight to DCA"

She'd claim the sent it to the wrong airport..

I think she would simply have filled out the form, filed it, and the luggage would have been delivered to her. She likely would have remained clueless about her mistake, believing her luggage got lost, not she.


Now, after having made fun of the lady, I can see how it would be possible to go to the wrong "Washington" gate for a very early flight after getting little sleep. Not quite as possible to reply "what does it matter" to a question of the destination airport when asked, though....:D

However, airport monitors tend to list the flights together as Washington-Dulles and Washington-Reagon, so it's a bit hard to not be aware that there are several DC area airports. I still call DCA National rather than Reagon, so that might be a source of confusion.

They seems to have solved that confusion for DFW and DAL (Dallas Love). When you step off the airplane in ATL, and look for your connecting flight at the gate board, if you're going to DFW, its under "D", but if you are going to Dallas Love, you better look under "L" for Love. However, in the terminal, both flights are under "D" for Dallas. :rolleyes:

Hey, could we leave the sexist connotations out!!:td:

How is being Blonde sexist?? ;)

ATL ---> IAD - 534 Miles

ATL ---> DCA - 547 Miles

Clearly, she did it to try'n scam an additional 14 valuable SkyMiles! ;)

:D



Me too!

2 wrongs don't make a right but 3 lefts do.

and don't ever stop - great airport given an unnecessary undeserved rename - our tax dollars at work :td:

2 wrongs don't make a right, but 2 wrights made an airplane!

I wonder if she was actually trying to scam into DCA vs. IAD. Often, travel to/from DCA is more expensive than BWI and, to a lesser extent, IAD while DCA is much more convenient for those in DC, MD, Arlington County, Alexandria, and portions of Fairfax County. Perhaps that's why she became a bit mad. She just really wanted to ride Metro after her flight :rolleyes: .

Yeah... Drop by Mineta Airport sometime.

Wrong seat, wrong flight, wrong destination
 

I guess this is the reverse of your story. I was at IAD back in August and was at one of the kiosks. The woman next to me had her email receipt and was fumbling with the kiosk and couldn't get it to print a boarding pass. I glance over and notice she's leaving out of BWI in less than 2 hours. I tell her she's at the wrong airport, and she's so confused.

I have to wonder what she ended up doing because there was a cancellation so I doubt that she was able to get in a flight out of Dulles. At least in this situation, it showed that the kiosks don't print out passes for other airports, because I wonder what the tsa would do. (Though online printed boarding passes could still be taken to the wrong airport)

I bet they blame each other about 4 times! ;) sorry couldn't resist

In 2005, I was on a flight from DCA-DFW on American. The flight was fairly empty with only about 50% of the seats full. It was the last flight of the night, landing around 10 pm.

As we approached DFW, the pilot announced that we would be landing in DFW in about 20 minutes. The guy behind me rang his flight attendant call button. When the flight attendant came over, he said, "Did they say this flight is landing in Dallas? I'm supposed to be on a flight to Houston!" The flight attendant said, "Yes, this is a flight to Dallas." He repeated, "But, I'm supposed to be on a flight to Houston." The flight attendant said "That's impossible, the gate agent wouldn't have let you board if you were supposed to be on a flight to Houston."

The passenger pulled out his boarding pass -- and sure enough, he had a boarding flight for a flight to Houston and had boarded the flight to Dallas.

He asked the flight attendants if there were any other flights to Houston -- they said no because it was 10 pm. He said he had a big meeting he had to be in Houston for the next day. After we landed, I heard him call a rental car company and was going to drive from Houston to Dallas.

So -- yes, this does happen. And yes, sometimes nobody notices until the passengers are in the wrong city!

Or maybe from Dallas to Houston? :confused:

ain't no cure for stupid!

Or if she was getting a rental car and being told you're at the wrong facility.

Well, in that case, the GA typing in the seat assignment manually would not have produced an OK to board note. Obviously not excusing the GA.

+1

That's particularly impressive given that I don't think AA flew DCA-IAH in 2005 (if they ever did), which would mean this passenger was not only on the wrong flight but on the wrong airline!

this has nearly happened to me , just once, forty years ago, at atl -delta almost took me to cvg instead of dca. no IT systems back then of course, delta actually depended on its people . remember the commercials anyone?

I don't think anyone else got it! ;)

Let's not forget the famous example of people thinking they were boarding a flight to Oakland (CA) and ending up in Ackland, NZ.

And, of course: MHT/MAN (Manchester); PDX/PWM (Portland)

Or Rochester, MN vs NY

and Panama City FL vs Panama City Panama.

Years ago, back when the gate agents manually inserted destination cards in slats, Eastern had lots of problems with passengers confusing those destinations

I could envision someone confusing San Jose CA with San Juan PR. They're both destinations that start with San J something. And isn't there another San Juan in Central America?

Not sure about San Juan, but there is a San Jose, Costa Rica.

Better stick with "National" because it definitely isn't "Reagon." :confused:

I was on a flight from ATL-PFN when someone commented that this plane seemed awfully small to be going to Panama City. It was an ATR-72, and he was actually traveling to PTY.