3 ms·

About a year ago they let me board the wrong plane. I was flying LAN, and the first leg of the flight, in the US, was operated by American Airlines. When I got

by lt 17y ago

About a year ago they let me board the wrong plane. I was flying LAN, and the first leg of the flight, in the US, was operated by American Airlines. When I got to Miami for my connection to Peru, I showed my ticked to an AA employee at the gate and asked which gate the flight would leave. She pointed me to a nearby gate, I went there, waited about an hour, and boarded when they called everyone. They manually checked my ticket and gave me the stub back. When I reached my seat there was someone already there. He showed me his ticked stub and he had the same seat number as I did. As I was cursing the airline for overbooking, we noticed his ticket was printed by AA, mine was by LAN. Since I had just flown with AA with a LAN ticket, I thought it was OK. The flight attendant returned after a while telling me that LAN and AA both had flights to Peru at that same time and my flight was actually leaving from a completely different terminal. I had to run all the way across the airport, get a new ticket printed, go through security again to get to the right flight. Since my bags had been checked to the final destination, if the AA flight wasn't full and they hadn't sold the seat I had I might have never noticed the mistake.

andrewcooke 17y ago
lan and aa share flights - you can book a lan flight and fly on an aa plane, or vice-versa, so this isn't that surprising (in fact, i think i have been in the same situation, but the other person was on the wrong flight. perhaps it was you? :o)
jrockway 17y ago
For future reference, if you were being bumped from the flight (due to overbooking), you would never have been allowed on the plane. They don't just assign two people the same seat and hope that you two will resolve it on board the aircraft. It is strange that the agents were not following the correct boarding procedure, which is to scan the barcode on your boarding pass and to ensure that the computer's idea of your seat assigument agrees with what's printed on the pass. Usually, if they disagree, a new boarding pass is printed, and you board with that. (I like when they don't match, as the next words are usually, "oh, we had to upgrade you...") Also, by not scanning the barcode, the gate agent ensured that you would not automatically be credited with frequent-flyer miles. Highly unusual.

by lt 17y ago

andrewcooke 17y ago

lan and aa share flights - you can book a lan flight and fly on an aa plane, or vice-versa, so this isn't that surprising (in fact, i think i have been in the same situation, but the other person was on the wrong flight. perhaps it was you? :o)

jrockway 17y ago

For future reference, if you were being bumped from the flight (due to overbooking), you would never have been allowed on the plane. They don't just assign two people the same seat and hope that you two will resolve it on board the aircraft. It is strange that the agents were not following the correct boarding procedure, which is to scan the barcode on your boarding pass and to ensure that the computer's idea of your seat assigument agrees with what's printed on the pass. Usually, if they disagree, a new boarding pass is printed, and you board with that. (I like when they don't match, as the next words are usually, "oh, we had to upgrade you...") Also, by not scanning the barcode, the gate agent ensured that you would not automatically be credited with frequent-flyer miles. Highly unusual.