Today I had a trip from Miami to Memphis with a stop in Atlanta, and I missed my flight for the most ridiculous reason. I am a college student who was home in Miami for spring break this last week. My flight home last weekend was with American. So when I went to the airport today, I naturally assumed that my flights today were also with American (My mom booked the flights).

So I go to the kiosks to print my boarding pass. I type in my confirmation number, and it says it needs age verification for some reason and an attendant comes over. While weird it not the first time that has happened so I’m not worried. She tells me to go up to the desk instead. 

I go up there and the guy asks for my, ID, destination, and time of departure. I give him all of that information and he prints me a boarding pass without any other questions. Has everything on it, my name, the flight, boarding group, and even a seat number. The only weird thing is he did not print the boarding pass for my connecting flight. Odd, but I just assume he forgot it. I have a 4 hour layover in Atlanta anyway so plenty of time to go ask the people there to print it. 

I go through security and get to my gate no problem. After a bit of waiting they call my group to board. I hand the pass to the lady at the gate and she scans it, the light turns green and she says go ahead so I go ahead and get on the plane. Find my seat and there is nobody there so I sit down, another guy sits down next to me and everything seems normal. However, after a few minutes a couple of the crew approach me and the guy next to me and ask for our boarding passes.

This is when we discover that we both have the same seat listed on our boarding pass, 20c (I had also sat in 20a which is right next to 20c in this plane because it’s a smaller plane that only has two seats per side, but that really doesn’t matter). I hand them my boarding pass because apparently there is an extra person on the plane that didn’t have a seat. We quickly realize that there are two people with 20c listed and one dude, the dude without a seat, listed at 20a. 

 The crew members are obviously very confused at this point. They call back to the desk to try to figure out who is supposed to be on the plane. At this point they ask to see my boarding pass again, which makes no sense because I already gave it to them. They claim they don’t have it and I’m like well I gave it to you and you never gave it back so idk what you did with it. The guy who was sitting next to me corroborates that fact.

After a while of back and forth they decide that I’m the one who is not supposed to be on the plane as they could not find my name on the flight list. I go back to the gate where they have like seven different employees talking to me trying to figure out what happened. I show one of the employees the Expedia confirmation that my mom sent me. After a few minutes typing in the confirmation number and seeing that she cannot access it she looked at back at the picture. She then points out that at the very bottom of the picture in small print it says Delta. 

Apparently, I was supposed to be on a Delta flight that was at the same time to the same place. I never noticed because I was 100% sure I was on American. Somehow, the guy at the desk just printed me a boarding pass for a flight that I was not on, and now I missed my other flight so I had to rebook for tomorrow. Unfortunately, I am going to have to repay for those flights because to Delta, I just missed my flight. I am going to try to see if I can get some compensation from American, but I doubt I’ll be successful. I’m just struggling to figure out how that would not be caught at the desk.

Edit: Just to clarify, I’m not really mad or anything, since traveling tomorrow doesn’t make a difference. I just think it’s a hilarious situation that was worth sharing. I’m just in awe that I somehow got a boarding pass for a flight I was never supposed to be on.

Edit 2: Just to clarify on the compensation thing since people seem to be taking that part super seriously. I’m not expecting anything. It’s just a “why not ask” type scenario, and maybe they’ll give me something. But whatever they decide will be completely up to whoever I talk to. Some of y’all are talking like I’m trying to sue them lol. It’s not that serious.