A United Airlines passenger was supposed to fly from New York LaGuardia to Chicago O’Hare on Friday but couldn’t because their ticket got used by someone else first.
They discovered this when their trip got changed to a flight about five hours earlier. They report that United told them they’d requested the change, and when it was discovered to be an unauthorized change they were told they’d get rebooked (traveling on Monday).
You would think that Untied might have filed a police report, and had the plane met by authorities in Chicago. It appears that did not happen.
United Airlines, Chicago O’Hare
And the passenger didn’t even get rebooked as they said they were promised. They got to the airport to fly, but had no ticket.
To make things worse, someone also checked a bag under my reservation with a credit card that wasn’t mine. How did United let this happen without proper ID checks? The staff admitted it was ticket fraud, documented the case, and gave me written confirmation—but offered no resolution.
How was someone able to use my boarding pass and check a bag that wasn’t me?? Mind you, I dont have a common name. I had to pay out of pocket for a new flight home and was told just to dispute it with the credit card. …United hasn’t reimbursed me or explained how this breach happened, claiming that “tsa security just wasnt strong”.
What could be happening here?
Chicago O’Hare B-C Tunnel
Getting Someone Else’s Boarding Pass
It’s not hard to get someone’s boarding pass if you know their travel plans – even just a little bit. You just use some social engineering. Call up the airline, give the passenger’s name and where they’re traveling. If you guess the specific flight wrong, hang up and call back trying a different flight.
Once you identify the correct flight, you can ask for seat assignment changes. You can ask for the reservation number. You can cancel the reservation! (A reader once did this to Lucky from One Mile at a Time and for awhile he’d ask airlines to password-protect his bookings, something done frequently for domestic violence victims.)
And with the reservation number and passenger name you can change things about the reservation online, generally, as well as check in and get a boarding pass.
Getting Past Security
The easiest way to fly as someone else is to book a ticket for yourself. You clear security under ‘your’ ticket, and cancel the ticket once you’re through the checkpoint (or not). I know someone that would have their assistant mileage run for them. They’d both go to the airport, both clear security, and then the boss would leave. The assistant would fly roundtrip using the boss’s boarding passes (never leaving the airport).
Something like that could have happened here – buy a $40 Frontier ticket under your own name, fly as someone else. And of course no ID is required to check in at a kiosk or using the airline’s mobile app.
TSA ID checks fail all the time. It’s probably below 1%, but that’s still more than 20,000 times each day. ID checkers have to determine whether some non-standard scan is fine or not. Additionally, about 2,000 people per day fly without ID. Sometimes their IDs are lost. Passengers answer challenge questions based on public databases to verify their identity instead.
Checking Bags
What’s strange about this story is that they say the passenger checked a bag. They paid with a credit card, but that’s easy enough. Credit card doesn’t necessarily need to match the passenger’s name. Use a prepaid debit card, even!
However the passenger was probably asked for ID when checking the bag. So they’d have had to both show ID to the airline and to TSA but they weren’t stopped.
So What’s Going On Here?
Taking the story at face value, someone knew enough about this passengers plans to change their flight and then travel on the ticket. What a strange thing to do!
This wasn’t likely random, but rather someone known to the passenger or that knows (of) the passenger. And why do this? It hardly seems worth it given the risks.
There are more law enforcement agencies on premises at a major international airport than just about anywhere else. There’s local police, TSA, Customs and Border Protection, DEA, and FBI – to name just a few. And there are cameras everywhere! Given how limited the benefit is, and how significant the risks, the choice seems strange indeed.
So united let the next twin towers guy fly. And marketing can use that in their advertisement
Having an assistant do a mileage run for you is absurd. Status is not that valuable anymore anyways. Why risk you both ending up on a do-not-fly list for a silly bag-tag and an occasional (if ever) complimentary upgrade. Impersonation and identity theft is a crime in many jurisdictions. I doubt any prosecutor is going to waste their time on this, but good luck with the credit card dispute over the lost value of the original ticket. Expect to have to appeal that a few times. *sigh*
United was the one who failed in this case but they probably just owe the cost of the ticket back to the correct ticket holder. Such situations happen so seldom that class action cannot be done. Maybe small claims court would work if United won’t refund the ticket and the credit card company won’t act. The correct ticket holder is the one who would have to report the situation to the police.
@Tomeri, he had to show an ID to get through TSA, so the theif is unlikely on a no-fly list. His bag was screened by the government. People get on planes domestically every day (the majority I assume) without showing an ID to the airline. This is not the method a (crafty) terrorist will use.
“I had to pay out of pocket for a new flight home and was told just to dispute it with the credit card.” If the suggestion was to use the card to purchase a new ticket and dispute that new charge, this is wrong (and I’d expect the CC co. To say no. Someone steals my phone, so I should charge fir a new one and expect to dispute that? Now, it might be possible that they were suggesting disputing the charge for the stolen ticket. But, that shouldn’t be a dispute, but maybe a claim if the card offers such protections.
Sorry, rethought this. If I order an item and pay online, pick up the item, which then gets stolen from me, I could dispute neither the original charge nor the charge to replace it. I might have an insurance claim on transaction one if the cc co. offers such coverage on purchases.
If, when I go to pick up the order, they report it was already retrieved, I could dispute that original transaction as they did not fulfill their obligation to provide the product. Still, the charge for the replacement should not be able to be disputed. So, yeah, dispute the first charge if UA won’t fix it.
When an agent types in a name it will start pulling up all like names flying out that day. It’s likely that the passenger who used the ticket was also flying that day on another flight and the agent chose the wrong name and pulled up the incorrect itinerary. TSA these days doesn’t check boarding passes, just swipes your ID which verified you had a flight that day.
So it is very possible that this was an innocent oversight and there wasn’t anything criminal or intentionally done. Any airport agent will tell you that it is very common for a passenger to be clueless about their flights, fees, boarding and check in times. A normal person would assume that every airline passenger doubels and triple checks their tickets but sadly that is hardly the case!
Re: credit card to gate check a bag – could have used a Visa or MC Gift Card.
No reason why plastic to check the bag would need to be in their name at all. It xould have been issued to “A gift for you” or purchased at Office Depot for cash.
If told that you have to check a bag, the gift card is swiped and et voilà!
Back in the day, I had a roll of ticket “stickers” that were very useful… but this scam of flying as someone else is actually genius.
Oh, but yeah, it’s wrong. So wrong. Very wrong. Shouldn’t do it. Ever.
Hmmm… it’s the retun that would be tough, they would have to throw away the return leg of a round trip. So they would need to do it again, or at that point buy a ticket.
Just trying to understand… 🙂
I second with Lisa. It was probably someone with a reservation with a similar name on the flight that tried making a legitimate change but it was made to the wrong reservation.
I once had a colleague (no status) ended up #1 on the upgrade list on AA and getting upgraded. I investigated out of curiosity and found out he was accidentally listed as a PPro’s companion when they person likely was trying to do it for someone else with a similar name
Yes, Lisa has the solution that absolutely makes the most sense, and I’ve seen happen before… even one time it was a passenger who didn’t speak english using a Chinese passport (where the western translation if exists doesn’t always match what is used in the reservation letter for letter) and my agent gave them the wrong boarding pass based on typing in the last name and selecting a similar first name. They got through security because of course they had another reservation for that day (boarding pass not checked). Problem was they saw same airline flight boarding at the first gate they came across and got on…. issue was the boarding pass they were given was for that flight. So they went to OAK and not BOS. Ooops. Agent did have a seat dupe on board but told the crew just have someone take an empty seat as it was departure time.
Yes, very easy to manufacture that there was malicious intent here and that sounds better, but just as easy to more simply see how this isn’t that difficult to just happen.
I may be the only airline person who has ever gone to court and won by saying that my agents weren’t being malicious, they’re just incompetent.
Facial recognition will put an end to this. Most majors are moving that way.
So, Gary, you tell us on your publicly available website how to steal someone’s ticket, and you think this is a good idea? Sheeze.
” Passengers answer challenge questions based on public databases to verify their identity instead.” Unfortunately, these “public databases” are sometimes WRONG.
I had someone (inadvertantly?) use my SSN with his power company, and then all the CRAs stupidly decided he and I were the same person. address etc included. I eventually got that sorted (with very little help from the CRAs), but not before being hit with such challenge questions based on that wrong info.
And one of my ID protection sites just informed me of a “Deep Web” site having that wrong info.
You don’t have law enforcement meet the flight because there’s a good chance that either the guy was an innocent dupe (although this one doesn’t sound like it) or it was a similar-name mistake on the part of the airline.