Two Pax With Same Name: Confusion
 

Flew LAS-JFK on Friday morning on B6 192 leaving at 10:20 AM. All was great, as usual on B6, except that we had a bit of situation.

Sometime after I boarded, a passenger sits down across the aisle from me, nothing unusual about this, obviously.

Then a few minutes later another passenger comes up to the seat and the following exchange ensues:

"Hi, I think you're in my seat." (Oh no, here we go again, I thought to myself)

"Oh," the passenger who arrived first looks up. "Are you sure? This is my seat."
The first passenger pulls out his boarding pass.

Sure enough, they had both been assigned the same seat. I have seen this often before, but never on B6.

"No problem, I'll see if I can find a seat somewehere else," the 2nd guy says.

That was easy enough.

Then all of a sudden.

"Wait a second, what's your name?" the 2nd guy asks.

"My name is John Smith," the first guy says (names have been changed to protect the innocent, etc.)

"John Smith? OK. My name is also John Smith, but mine is spelled John Smyth."

"I get it. They gave me your boarding pass."

When the 2nd passenger mentioned this to a f/a, this caused a minor brouhaha, since the manifest now showed two John Smiths. but no John Smyth.

I wonder that could have happened in the first place.

After a little, obviously pretty animated huddle out of my earshot, everything was worked out and we had the usual excellent, comfortable, on-time flight on jetBlue.

Thank you jetBlue, you are the best! And I even aprpeciated the gentle entertainment of the two John Smiths...

Same seat
 

Hi all,

I had a similar situation on a JFK-FLL flight. Two people, same seat assignments. Did the usual, check both boarding passes to make sure they were on the right flight, at the right time. Then I noticed the passes had the same name, but it wasn't a common name.

I asked the guy with the pass that had the wrong name on it to please stand in the aft galley while we sorted it out. When I informed our pilot, he called up to the gate for a GSC to help straighten it out. In the meantime the guy found a seat in 5D, a long way from the aft galley.

So now we have a passenger, with no boarding pass, onboard our plane somewhere (at first I couldn't find him, as I hadn't looked at him that closely) which was a huge security risk. I finally found him, and the GSC removed him from the plane until they verified his ID. When he returned with his correct boarding pass, they had seated him in the emergency exit row. Which I found ironic, for a guy, who minutes ago was considered a security risk.

He ended up with a comp movie and seemed to enjoy the flight.

Just another day. ;)

Weird Story...
 

Somewhat similar to your stories, but not exactly:

I just went to check in online for my flight tomorrow morning. The web site said "You've already checked in" (which I did not). I called up, the agent said it was checked in at 3:08pm. He got his supervisor, unchecked in and I was able to check in and print my boarding pass. It's scary that someone out there was able to check in as me. That boarding pass has been voided and hopefully everything will work out ok for me tomorrow.

The only thing I find a little odd is how the system could generate two boarding passes for the same passenger and apparently more than once...

I've been able to check-in as someone else, too. I got to the airport a few hours early, checked in at the kiosk, then noticed that my ticket did not have my name or destination correct. I had swiped a credit card to check in, so that was extra spooky. The person's name really wasn't close to mine at all.

My father and I both have the same name. Even though I usually try to remember to add "Jr." or "Sr." to one of our reservations, I always wonder if someone will question why there are two people with the same name on the passenger list. So far, I"ve never had a problem.