Last year a French woman flew United to San Francisco when her boarding pass was for a flight to Paris. United said ‘oops’.
Now an 80 year old United passenger accidentally flew to Denver instead of Raleigh this week.
The woman is partially blind and doesn’t speak English. Her family had requested special assistance for her. After she turned up at the wrong airport United flew her from Denver to Raleigh onboard United flight UA544 and she landed at 10:46 p.m.
The woman’s daughter says she was handed someone else’s boarding pass.
“They were like, ‘Oh yeah. We made a mistake, and she was given the wrong boarding pass and so she’s in Denver. But it’s not a big deal. We’ve already got her on a flight to Raleigh, and we gave her a meal voucher,’” Paradis said.
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United has apologized, issued a refund, as well as offered compensation in the form of a travel certificate. They add,
Our customer care team is in contact with her family to ensure we make this right. We are also investigating this incident internally to better understand what happened so that we can prevent this from happening again.
Foreign airlines generally have flight attendants check passenger boarding passes at the door to the aircraft while US airlines don’t. United might consider it.
(HT: @MarkLNewman)
“Foreign airlines generally have flight attendants check passenger boarding passes at the door to the aircraft while US airlines don’t. United might consider it.”
How will that help if the woman had the wrong boarding pass, stating she should be going to DEN rather than RDU, to begin with?
I don’t see anything UA can do but apologize profusely to the affected parties. It sounds like this was an innocent mistake that occurs rarely enough not to warrant much consideration.
A few months ago my daughter was returning from DEN to TPA through ORD and it was after she arrived in ORD that she looked at the boarding pass and saw it was through to FRA and NOT İN HER NAME.
@KimmieA Yep. I got the wrong person’s BP after doing SBY in EWR last year (at T-12 no less!). Didn’t realize til we were taxiing! Mistakes happen.
The big difference is neither of us paid for special handling! LOL That is the egregious part!