JetBlue staff boarded a flight in Jamaica to question a passenger who was seated about traveling without a ticket. The passenger didn’t take kindly to be questioned, threatening to throw down: “Mek mi f**k-up one a unuh in yah.” The employee asked again.

Viewers of this video are perplexed: how could the woman board the flight without a boarding pass? It’s an international flight and she’d have had to clear passport control, security, and then scan her boarding pass at the gate. She may have even had her boarding pass checked again at the jet bridge.

She could have mistakenly been allowed to board – for instance with a ticket for a different flight. Things can get chaotic at the gate, with the woman boarding with passengers ahead of her. For instance, they might have scanned three boarding passes as a family but a group of four actually heads down the jetway. Maybe she showed the boarding pass for a different flight upon boarding if that was checked. Some passengers have made a virtual career of being a stowaway as well!

It’s a lot harder on a full flight because someone is certainly going to head to your seat, have a boarding pass for it, and raise an issue. A flight with extra seats should still reveal that unticketed passenger when the actual passenger count doesn’t match the flight’s manifest. But cabin crew make mistakes even there. Someone might be in the lavatory.

Here I’m entirely open to the possibility that the flight attendant was aggressive, or that culturally there was a misunderstanding. If the woman had a boarding pass, she should have showed it. But the crew should have asked nicer?