Passenger Boarded A Flight Only To Learn Their Seat 27E Didn’t Exist

A passenger boarded their Lisbon flight only to discover that seat 27E on their boarding pass didn’t exist. They certainly weren’t supposed to sit in the aisle.

Back in 2012 Ryanair floated the idea of ‘standing seats’ to pack more passengers in and lower costs. And Airbus has a patent for ‘double decker’ seating. But neither idea is supposed to be real or is approved for flying!

Always nice to board a flight to find your seat, 27E, does not exist 🤣#nffc pic.twitter.com/j0ZYw8O6uB

— C_nffc (@ggdotcom6787) April 8, 2026

What may have happened here is a last-minute aircraft swap. The plane they were supposed to be on had a 27E. This one did not. Their seat was probably changed but they didn’t get a new boarding pass. It might have scanned improperly and the agent overrode it, or they were recognized as a passenger on the flight and the printed seat didn’t error.

• The passenger was checked in on a six-abreast aircraft
  
• The aircraft changed to one that’s four-abreast
  
• The passenger already had (and kept) a boarding pass showing the old seat assignment

After a seat change due to aircraft swap, the system or agent should adjust seats. The passenger holds a boarding pass that doesn’t match their seat assignment anymore. The passenger may even not have been given a new boarding pass – a receipt with new seat may have been printed during boarding if there was no boarding pass printer.

My first thought was that the partial boarding pass looks like TAP Air Portugal, and of course it indicates Lisbon. A TAP Airbus narrowbody changed to a TAP Express Embraer regional jet would also make sense (6 seats in each rown down to 4). That would be unusual but not impossible. And TAP Embraers do have row 27. However I don’t think they have D/F seating which is indicated above the row in the cabin photo.

Now, if there were more passengers boarded than seats that becomes a different problem. The airline would need to take volunteers, and any denial of boarding would require compensation under EU Regulation 261/2004. Unlike in the U.S., required compensation applies not just to overbooking but also operational changes like an aircraft swap.

• €250 for flights of 1,500 km or less,
  
• €400 for intra-EU flights over 1,500 km and other flights between 1,500 and 3,500 km,
  
• €600 for longer flights

If the passenger gets to their destination within a short period of time (2, 3 and 4 hour thresholds based on these distances) then compensation is cut by 50%.

We have seen passengers boarded without seats, where there were more passengers than seats on board, and the plane actually flew.

A family on TUI were assigned seats 41 D/E/F, the aircraft changed, and those seats no longer existed. The flight was oversold by two, and a child got the real seat while her parents wound up on jumpseats and then the floor.

Recently on an overbooked Transavia flight a woman and child were given cockpit jumpseats for their six hour journey.

And a Delta flight pushed back with more passengers than seats — 182 passengers on a 180-seat Boeing 737-900 – but they realized it prior to takeoff, returned to the gate, and two employee standby passengers were removed.