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...

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

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!"

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....

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.