Back in June (yes, 2005) I was flying ORD-GSO (Greensboro, NC) and leaving from one end of the C concourse. The problem was that there were two UAX Embraers parked side by side....one to GSO and the other, leaving 5 min later, to GreenVILLE, SC.

Unreal - both planes left about 30 min late as no fewer than 10 pax got on the wrong plane. As I boarded, I asked to co-pilot if "this was the flight to GSO." He looked at me, pulled out the flight plan, and said, "um...looks like it."

Didn't give me that sense of confidence I was looking for, but we made it anyway. ;)

When UA introduced Nagoya and there were some super cheap fares, I decided to do an MR. On the plane next to me was another FTer. I won't reveal her name, but she revealed that she was headed to Tokyo and all of her reservations, etc. were for Tokyo. We hung out (since we both needed hotels, but I knew I was heading to Nagoya :D ). It was a fun 23 hours in Nagoya.

R

My home airport, MBS (Saginaw, MI) is now officially called "MBS International Airpot". It used to be called "Tri-City International Airport", from the fact the airport is owned joinly by the cities of Midland/Bay City/Saginaw, MI. Over the course of history, there were frequent happenings of people getting shipped to "Tri-Cities Airport" in Tennessee and vice-versa--stories of people waiting to be picked up one of the airports, when they had accidentally booked and flown into another were abundant. About 5-6 years ago, 'MBS', as in the three-letter code, officially changed its name to match its code, and the stories of people erroneously ending up in the wrong state (and 500 miles away from their intended destination) have since subsided...Although--UA still calls it 'Tri-City Airport' in their records, even though the name has been gone for several years now.

He was coming from the Air New Zealand flight from London (which goes via LAX) to Auckland. So he'd have his passport with him. I remember an interview with him:

Q- When did you realise that you were on the wrong flight ?
A- I was always surprised that Air New Zealand flew to Oakland from LAX, but when the F/A said the flight would take 13 hours, I knew I'd made a huge mistake...

But ANZ handled it wonderfully !

I admit to doing this, once. I use to live in Asheville, NC, and I was in Houston visiting some friends. I booked the IAH-CLT-AVL one stop on US to get home. The plane was delayed coming out of IAH, and upon landing the very Southern FA announced that if you were continuing on to _ashville, you could stay on the plane, since it was a light flight and it would be a quick turn. I was half-asleep in my F seat, and had thought she had said Nashville, not Asheville. So, when she walked past, I asked her to make sure the plane was going to Asheville. She said yes. So, I stayed on.

Of course, it was the same flight crew continuing on. Imagine my surprise when the Yankee Captain announced we were going to Nashville, TN.

Oops.

Not the only boob
 

I have done this once while connecting in the new Business 1 area of ORD after coming from PVG on the way to PHL going in Gate 3 instead of 4 or 2. The GA caught it and needless to say I felt like a boob. :o
It happens to the best of us.
-UFFA

I did this same thing some years ago. I was in such a hurry and hadn't noticed a gate change announcement. The GA just tore my boarding stub and since I was one of the first to board my seat was empty. I sat down and made myself comfy until the first announcement that we were headed for ORD (I was heading for LAX!). At first I thought it was one of those common mistakes where the FA comes back on the speaker and says "oops, haha, no, we're going to LAX" ... but the second time the announcement was made I realized I'd better ask. Needless to say I felt humiliated when I realized I was on the wrong plane! :D

That was Home Alone II: Lost in New york when Macauley Culkin sees a guy that looks like is dad enter the jetway, and runs to catch him, and bumps into the GA spilling all the boarding passes (including his own) asunder. The plane is in a hurry to push off, so they make him sit down in F, hence catch the wrong flight out, and end up in New York instead of ????.

The thing I noticed immediately was that the terminal shots in ORD were filmed in 1 (of United) but the flights were AA.

A friend of mine once had a ticket from ORD-TUS (on HP I believe), but showed up to MDW. He eventually found a ticket on NW via MSP and was eight hours late arriving.

Edit:
The wrong-NZ flight was indeed in a Full House episode. A synopsis can be found at this link:
http://www.tv.com/full-house/come-fl...1/summary.html

In addition, when said with a heavy Kiwi accent, 'Auckland' can sound like 'Oakland' to the untrained ear.

Anyone who watches "Full House" deserves to be on the wrong plane.

When your miles posted, did you get SFO-EWR or SFO-BWI miles?

I think he called MP after the trip and requested miles for both. ;)

Ha... Just imagine if your seat wasn't taken you might have ended up in BWI - would have been pretty weird situation when you explain to a CSR on the ground.

Luang Prabang, Laos, April 1990, not long after Lao New Year's. For several days, our reserved seats to Vientiane kept getting sold out from under us (Lao Aviation wouldn't hesitate to bump int'l passengers trying to make int'l connections onward if a local official or spouse wanted to go shopping in Vientiane.) We finally got our confirmed seats really confirmed, and boarded the plane--a Yakovlev prop, if memory serves. The last passenger up the stairs looks up and down the aisle, and can't find an open seat. A little scurrying around at the front of the plane, and the ground crew climb in and yank a barefooted, bedraggled, mentally ill "passenger" out of the seat he'd taken and send him back to the tarmac. Frequent flyers on the Luang Prabang-Vientiane route explained that it happened all the time--he would regularly join the parade of people hiking out to the plane and take the seat of his choice.

("Overbooking" on Lao Aviation also meant the not infrequent extra row of plastic stools down the center aisle of the Chinese 12-seaters. There wasn't any toilet to go to anyway, so no reason the aisle had to be open.)

My dad, who went to UC Berkeley in the 60's, told me this story of Auckland/Oakland confusion again and again in the late 70s and 80s, and it is one of the stories I fondly remember as a kid. He always told me that his professor told him the story, so to me, the story is from before 1970.

albatross