American Airlines Let A Passenger Board, Then Said They Weren’t Checked In — And Kicked Them Off The Plane For A Standby

A passenger on American Airlines flight 2324 from Dallas – Fort Worth to Austin on Thursday night boarded the aircraft. They scanned their boarding pass at the gate, answered the exit row questions (willing and able to assist in an emergency), sat down, and then got told they were “not checked in” after a standby passenger showed up for the same seat. They were removed from the aircraft and rebooked, eventually getting home around 1:30 a.m.

They boarded with group 1. When the whole plane had boarded, they were kicked off the aircraft:

[T]his last person gets on and I’m guessing she’s a standby, and she says I’m in her seat and I’m like no that’s my seat. I have the boarding pass to prove it. I show it to the flight attendant and they see that Boarding pass but they don’t see me on the check-in list on their iPad.

…The gate agent refuses to come on the plane and tells the flight attendant that I need to speak to her at the door. …This super rude Gate attendant comes to the door and says “YOU didn’t check in, it says you’re not checked in”. I told her to go check the security cameras, cause I spoke with her directly, looked at her in the face and told her that she asked me the exit seating questions. and then she continues to say “you didn’t check in” like she was trying to put the blame on me.

She said it doesn’t matter at this point. I said I’m Executive Plat. You’re about to give my seat up to a standby.. She said it’s too late to change anything you should’ve checked in. And I said “do you think I snuck around you while you were checking people in? “

…She tells me to go get my stuff I need de-board the plane and go talk to her at the gate. … I asked her is the flight leaving without me? She goes, talk to you at the gate. I give my car keys to my friend that I boarded with cus I already know the outcome..

[Flight attendants say] we have a couple extra seats that you could sit in and they show me on the tablet they have.

the flight attendants on board were flabbergasted too and were like, “this is wrong. How does this make any sense, you’re already on the flight and we have extra seats.

…I go up to the gate and the lady upfront says you’re not boarding that flight. ..She goes and book me on the next flight out, which is another hour and a half later. … She said “I needed to get you off the flight otherwise we would’ve been charged a $50,000 fee for leaving late and that was the decision I made.”

Their new flight was delayed twice. They eventually got in at 1:30 a.m. – and their friend traveling with them didn’t stay the three hours, so they wound up stuck with a $90 Uber.

The passenger was clearly checked in. They had a boarding pass and they were accepted for boarding. However, something in American’s system along the way changed the passengers status, and they no longer showed as boarding.

Once they were within 15 minutes of departure, and getting ready to close the flight, they appeared not to have boarded and so their seat was given away to a standby passenger. Separately, the passenger says the gate agent claimed to have paged them, but that they were sitting at the gate and were never paged. The page likely came at 15 minutes to departure, when they were already on the aircraft.

When the gate was closing the flight, his seat looked releasable, so it got given to a standby.
Once the standby was processed and the flight was closed out, the agent decided it was easier to remove the original passenger than to reopen the mess and even give them one of the empty seats on the plane.

No one was being fined $50,000 if they departed late. But the gate agent would’ve been marked down, and possibly called in to explain themselves to a manager.

The gate agent should have taken the time to fix the manifest, and correct their error. There were empty seats on the plane. All of the passengers who were boarded should have been accommodated on the flight. And there was no downline risk to a delay – the aircraft and crew would have been overnighting in Austin. (I do not know for certain that the crew did not have time out risk, but since this flight wasn’t yet delayed it’s highly unlikely.)

This was almost certainly a violation of Department of Transportation rules and a violation of American’s own Contract of Carriage.

• The post-David Dao regulation, 14 CFR 250.7, says an airline cannot deny a revenue passenger permission to board or involuntarily remove that passenger once the passenger has checked in before the deadline, and had the boarding pass collected or electronically scanned and accepted.

• The only exception is for safety, security, or health risk, or the passenger behavior (obscene, disruptive, or otherwise unlawful).

• American’s conditions of carriage say it won’t involuntarily remove a revenue passenger who has already boarded to give a seat to another passenger.

Ironically, the passenger appears to have been involuntarily denied board due to an American Airlines error – not due to overbooking – and so the requirement for cash compensation doesn’t actually apply. If they’d been removed because of oversales the airline would owe 400% of the one-way fare, up to $2,150.

In a normal case, of course, if there were more passengers than seats American Airlines gives priority to passengers with seat assignments and based on elite status. This passenger wouldn’t have been bumped in favor of someone else (let alone a standby passenger!).