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.
My husband and I have had this happen ourselves. We attempted to board the plane and find our seats only to find out they didn’t exist. They had also exchanged planes. We were lucky enough to still get seats.
It is a TAP boarding pass, you are right.
So what happened to the passenger? Was there an empty seat they could be moved to? Did another passenger get bumped? Or did the passenger assigned to 27E get bumped due to there being no empty seat to assign them to?
I love EU261 (and UK261, and Canada’s APPR). We really do need similar rules in the USA, so that passengers at least get compensated when the airlines screw them over. Someday…
@ 1990 — We need a new POTUS, et al first…
This is the exact problem we see when airlines remove their departure control systems (check-in) from their PSS (host). Many airlines use 3rd parties to manage their check-in, and if their seat maps do not align perfectly, then this happens. Surprised we don’t hear about this more.
example: at Alaska Airlines, everything used to be done in Sabre. 15 years ago, someone built “Image”, which is a graphical user interface that keeps the agents from having to do G-123-haolenate for checkin and follow the native prompts in Sabre. Now they’re using a 3rd party program that runs on top of Sabre AND Image and doesn’t really interact with Sabre as much. Its all point and click now.
Cost of being cheap can have even the most absurd problems creep up. A mismatched seatmap is just one of them.
@haolenate — Sabre for Alaska-Virgin America merger; SabreSonic for Alaska-Hawaiian; is it really any better?
And how they still don’t have 2FA for logins on their website… wild.
I was nervous being assigned seat K on TAP, as K does not exist in the Portuguese alphabet. But all was good and K was there. Certainly a good ending. I hope theirs ended well too!
Been there was assigned J-10. J only went up to 8. Got pulled off for trying to scam the airlines and found out the system assumed they were using a bigger jet. I was assigned a seat. So they had to figure out how to get me somewhere. So 3 layovers an a 6 hour wait for the first flight, I make it. Hilarious (sarcasm) that they first assumed fraud on my part.
Hey, Stand — you’re in cattle car Coach class, and compared to the seats, you’ll be more comfortable.
One version of TAP’s 321s (one of the neo variants it flies) has the right side aisle seat missing in row 27, an exit row. It isn’t clear in Aerolopa whether the two remaining seats are DF or EF. One possibility is the plane shows what would be the middle seat as D (as shown in photo), while the system thinks it E. Then, no problem, sit in the “middle” seat. It could also be a swap, as speculated, since all their 320/1s have DEF in row 27.
When in a narrow body aircraft I imagine that being bumped from an E seat to different seat, other than another E or B, would be an upgrade
It might have been Transavia and not TAP.
It would be nice to know the outcome. Hopefully an upgrade to Premium Economy or Business Class!
It’s refreshing to see how Americans voted for less regulation so the airlines are not burdened with compensating passengers when they make mistakes.
It really makes one very proud to be American!