findark

I mean.. even a non-English speaker should be able to look up at the gate display and tell the difference between "Paris" and "San Francisco". Pretty sure I could do that in any alphabet I'm even passingly familiar with (Latin, Cyrillic, Hangul). Obviously, the passenger was probably distracted for other reasons and UA shares responsibility, but yes I think that many people could have caught their own mistake.

Reminds me of this - amazing how easy it is to get onto the wrong flight.

halls120

I get it that she didn't speak English. But the last time I checked, numbers in English are the same as numbers in French. Why didn't she notice the difference between the flight number on her BP and the flight number posted at the gate?

chavala

This just happened to a fellow FTer a few months ago. He boarded a flight to MSY by mistake. Can't find it now but it was a very funny thread.

mauiUAflyer

This seems to happen every once in a while. There was recently a thread (I searched but couldn't find it) started by a FTer, who boarded in ORD (MSP?) and was supposed to fly to IAD, but ended up flying to MSY. Language wasn't a problem for him... he fell asleep after boarding and missed the announcement.

I'm guessing the CDG pax didn't have the UA app...lol, but she might have checked the departure screen. "Paris" is still "Paris" in French and English, as is "San Francisco". And UA should have caught it when she boarded...

chavala

Boarded wrong flight.. PQM credit?

CappuccinoAddict

My guess is that this woman is also an inexperienced traveler who rarely flies. She probably was unaware to keep checking the screen for gate information as she likely did not know the gate may change. And the boarding pass says "Gate May Change" or something like that but it says so in English not French! So I can see how the passenger could make the mistake if she speaks not a word of English. This is definitely on UA.

goldbar

A few years ago I was on a flight from Newark to Hong Kong. The gate attendant making the boarding announcement (in English) had a heavy Spanish accent, so much so, I could barely understand him. Understandably, the majority of the passengers were Asian (probably Chinese). They seemed to comprehend directions with little difficulty.

rmadisonwi

The story of the FTer boarding the wrong flight made me wonder about the design of the boarding pass scanners, and in particular, the audio cues that they give.

In that thread, the poster stated that the scanner gave a beep for the wrong flight which sounded like the same beep as an exit row beep (presumably because the GA is supposed to verify that it's not a kid boarding with that seat). I'm sure when GAs are scanning 150+ boarding passes at a time, they can easily "zone out" (so to speak) and just hear the same beeps over and over again. If, in fact, the alert for the wrong flight is the same as the alert for the exit row, it's quite easy to see how a moment of inattention while performing a repetitive action a hundred times can lead to something like this. That would be a flaw in how the scanner system functions. (Ideally, the audio alerts would be different and distinct tones for each type of scan, maybe even a buzzer of sorts for "wrong flight" scans.) Yes, the gate agent should have been paying attention, but in a world of humans, it's easy to see how something like this could happen. You don't expect someone boarding the wrong flight, you do expect people to board with exit row seats, so the default assumption is that the audio alert is exit row or something similar, and by the time you even think something might be odd, several other passengers have boarded and the info is off the screen already.

hughw

I disagree. The gate she boarded from was originally for the Paris flight. There's any number of reasons that a number of Paris bound French speakers might be at that gate instead of the new gate. Lots of travelers if less experienced, or perhaps just in a rush, don't recheck what gate the plane is at after they've done so once.

Happened to me....I'm headed to STL and I started boarding a flight at gate 127 around 67:30am half asleep. The boarding pass beeped...the gate attendant said you're on the wrong flight and I set an Olympic speed record for 800 meters running to gate 88 to beat the door closing.

Collierkr

Not so sure I agree with this. I am pretty sure that anyone taking their citizenship oath must do so in English. Ironically, those who are citizens by birth never have to pass that test.

ysolde

Mi postulas anoncoj faritaj en Esperanto.

HTH!

mherdeg

Wow - weird - do people not get naturalized in Puerto Rico? Or do the people handling that ceremony just administer the oath in an odd secondary language required by a quirk of federal law (that is, English)?

(Checked this out. Yup, merely residing in Puerto Rico where Spanish is the primary language and Spanish and English are the official languages does *not* exempt you from the English-language requirements involved in becoming a US citizen -- see e.g. https://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship...accommodations and https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/le...s-english-test . Cool stuff!)

mherdeg

It really seems like a serious UX issue that the boarding pass scanners used by gate agents provide almost exactly the same audio feedback for:

(1) This sequence number has already boarded (duplicate/wrong BP)
(2) Verify exit row OK
(3) This isn't the flight we're boarding (scanned your SYR-EWR boarding pass on your EWR-SFO flight)
(4) The passenger's seat has changed, please advise them of their new seat

It's just an angry beep. Lots of angry beeps. Easy to imagine that a GA could mishandle a beep.

That being said, it seems like the degree to which "I boarded the wrong flight and ended up going somewhere I wanted to!" ends up being the airline's fault seems to depend a little bit on how much extrinsic anger popular culture currently has for the airline.

ysolde

People born in Puerto Rico are US citizens, no naturalization required.

hughw

Since 1941, anyone born is PR is a US citizen by virtue of birth.