ChasenSFO
hen teaser
Each case is different, but its usually because someone is in a hurry. In the case I had where I sent a YYC bound pax to EUG, there were a few factors. YYC was supposed to leave from my gate, but was gate changed an hour or so ahead of time. This was announced many times, and updated on all the screens, but people's ears don't work in airports. This was a full flight, on a quick turn. At the time, it was very common for many pax to realize they aren't sitting togeather(because US Airways labels the seats in their RJs ACDF and we labeled them ABCD, pax connecting off US Airways almost always had 'AC' or 'DF' seats) at the start of boarding. I'm busy taking care of all that while the other agent rushes to scan boarding passes. If a pax had a boarding pass that wouldn't scan for some reason, the other gate agent shouted the seat to me and I manually boarded the person when I had a second to do it. A YYC bound pax handed my co-worker a EUG-SFO boarding pass(wouldn't have been the right one even for her intended flight). It didnt' scan, my coworker glanced at it real quick and saw SFO and EUG on the pass, then shouted the seat number to me as she threw it in a pile with the other manual boarding passes. I boarded the seat number and it showed the start of her name, Christina(CHRISTI), good enough 99.99% of the time in that situation and the pax was already on their way. She threw it in the pile with the other boarding passes and was busy dealing with a drunk pax while trying to pull tickets and make annoucements. Everyone gets on board, 66 pax in the computer, 66 pax on the plane. This pax was a Star Alliance Gold member(meaning she's flown 100 segments or 100,000 miles on Star Alliance airlines in a year) who spoke perfect English. Despite all the times I said Eugene, the departure screens, the lack of a passport check, 2/3 of the plane wearing "OREGON" clothing, the F/A announcements, and the CA saying it would be just over an hour of a flight when YYC is about 3 hours, and the fact she just came from Eugene, the lady doesn't notice. Plane takes off. A pax shows up who "missed" EUG about an hour later. He was in the SAME SEAT on the flight that the YYC bound woman had on the way to SFO earlier that day. Turns out his name was Christian and the name was just cut off. We get a call that a lady is in EUG who was supposed to go to YYC. She didn't realize she was in EUG until she used the bathroom on arrival. Which is strange, since it turned out she LIVED in EUG and just flew out of there a few hours earlier as she had at least 50 times that year. She went home, got huge compensation, then was flown first class EUG-SFO-YYC in the morning. The best part is a supervisor who is a good friend of mine appologized to her when she got to SFO, but just had to ask why the lady didn't notice anything. The lady replied, and I quote, "I travel by air so I don't have to think, its your job to do that for me". I'll never forget that.
You can't make this stuff up. I was known for rarely screwing up. Then I screwed up royaly. It can happen to anyone. In fact, most of the well liked gate agents had an incident or two like this since they tended to be much more relaxed. The strict, anal, and unpleasant(aka there are 10 people on the plane, but I'm going to board by zones that don't exist on this flight because its policy) agents never made mistakes like this. Go figure.
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