Originally published at: Oops! Frontier Airlines sent passenger to Jamaica instead of Jacksonville — without a passport | Boing Boing
…
5 Likes
I wonder if Frontier will end up being sorrier to to the feds on one or both end of that flight.
I’m definitely not qualified to comment on the state of the law worldwide; but it’s not uncommon for failure to verify travel documents for passengers to be something you can get fined over, per incident. And one can only assume that the person you boarded by accident is not included in your eAPIS manifest.
11 Likes
Sending this passenger to the wrong country and all they can do is give her $600? My time is worth more than a $600 
and i would want that in cash because i would never fly Frontier.
14 Likes
Should have put her up in some resort there for a few days.
It’s not like airlines are losing any money. They still have $BILLIONS$ we, US tax payers, gave them during the pandemic.
10 Likes
Seriously, $600 is like the starting price for “we overbooked our flight and would like someone to take the next flight in 2 hours.” Not “we sent you to the wrong country, nearly cause an international incident, and kept you trapped in a plane in another country for many hours.”
11 Likes
I used to laugh at my partner for taking his passport when we flew domestically but after a Canadian flight to Vancouver was diverted to Seattle due to weather, I’ve come around to his point of view. (To be clear, we weren’t on that flight ourselves.)
12 Likes
Not really possible considering that she had no passport.
15 Likes
They could have somebody retrieve it and and Fed Ex it down in a day. 
My point is they could have done something nicer than a few hundred. Wouldn’t have cost them anything.
7 Likes
I’m British, and the one time I took a domestic flight in the USA I showed my passport because that was the only proof of identity that I had.
8 Likes
Retrieve it from where? Either she does not have a passport or she left it at home because she was not travelling internationally. It would not be in her checked baggage on the flight to Jacksonville.
8 Likes
we have issued a $600 Frontier Airlines flight voucher tied to the name Beverly Ellis-Hebard that is valid for one year."
That seems like a weirdly corpo-speak way of putting it. Is the idea that they get to renege if she changes her name?
12 Likes
Wow! What a lucky escape! This poor person almost ended up in Jacksonville.
16 Likes
if she was traveling from Philadelphia to Jacksonville in the first place, why did they send her back to Philly when her bags went to JAX?
2 Likes
Also, it’s a typical passive-voice non-apology apology.
It should have been “We are sincerely sorry we put Ms. Ellis-Hebard on the wrong flight.”
8 Likes
If Frontier wasnt first-come-first-seat choice, this might not have happened, as someone would more than likely have been in a seat assigned to her already on the Jamaica flight
4 Likes
This smells fishy. Don’t they scan your boarding pass before you get on the plane?
4 Likes
This part here is upstanding. It’s not their fault that she was on the plane (that would be the ground crew), and they didn’t get paid a dime for the whole time the plane was on the ground. Corporate, on the other hand, needs to get their shit together.
6 Likes
I’m definitely not qualified, either, but I have a hazy memory that several decades ago the airlines didn’t check your passport before departure: once you got to your destination you were on your own. Then again maybe I was just a kid and don’t remember those boring formalities.
I also wonder how useful that passport check is for countries that require more than a valid passport for entry, e.g. a visa. Do the airlines check if all your paperwork is in order, or just the passport?
4 Likes
And where did her luggage end up?
It sounds like when she checked in her luggage, the procrustean baggage sizer scraped her hand, she went into the washroom, the gate changed, and she came out and went to the (now) wrong gate.
(The staff at the gate should have known that the flight associated with the gate had just changed, and been extra careful checking boarding passes.)
Did her bags go to Jacksonville?
5 Likes
So she didn’t go of her own accord?
2 Likes
