Michelle has told of her rather interesting flight.
WHEN Michelle Cheung arrived at the airport for her Virgin Australia flight from Perth back home to Sydney, it seemed like it would be just another ordinary trip.
The 36-year-old had checked in with plenty of time, boarding her plane and settling in to her seat without incident. But that all changed when another passenger approached and insisted that Michelle was in the wrong seat.
The thing is, she wasn’t. Must have been an innocent mistake, right?
Things got even stranger when the other passenger pulled out her boarding pass, pointing to the designated seat number printed on it. They had both been assigned the same seat.
That was baffling enough, but Michelle really did a double take when she spotted the name printed on the stranger’s pass - it was the same as hers.
So hang on, they had the exact same name? Well, no.
A stranger ended up with her boarding pass.
It turns out the other passenger was flying under the wrong name, on the wrong plane, with the wrong airline.
They discovered this when, amid the confusion, a flight attendant stepped in and asked to see both of their IDs; it turned out they had different first names but a similar last name (Chung instead of Cheung).
“I showed the staff my itinerary which clearly showed my e-ticket for that flight,” Michelle told news.com.au. “Since the other lady’s English was broken, she had to ring someone who could translate over the phone.”
Somehow, the other woman had also been given Michelle’s boarding pass. Next came a dash to sort out where they were actually meant to be going.
“A more senior staff got on board to assist and finally between them the penny dropped when they realised she was issued my boarding pass when in fact she was flying with Qantas to Sydney.
“They even had to pull her bag off the plane as she had checked baggage. Fortunately for the lady, the staff were onto it straight away ushering her off the plane and onwards I suppose to her real flight.
“She was ok about it considering she was probably just lost in translation? The staff were apologetic and didn’t make much fuss over it. My own bags were checked in under my partner’s name so we knew they wouldn’t accidentally remove my baggage.”
The other passenger was meant to be on a Qantas flight.
A Virgin Australia spokesperson said: “Virgin Australia has a thorough check process in place for passengers travelling domestically, including during check-in, at the boarding gate and upon entering an aircraft.
“Very rarely, human error does occur and we apologise for the confusion in this instance. Importantly, there is no safety risk when this occurs as all passengers and baggage have been screened by security.”
Michelle was quite baffled by how this could happen and concerned about potential security rammifications.
“It’s definitely up there as the strangest thing that’s happened to me,” Michelle said.
“So despite me boarding before her and hence having my boarding pass scanned, it didn’t register with Virgin that two people had boarded with the same pass? It was quite amusing at the time.
“It’s really odd but in this day and age it makes you wonder where the checks failed? You assume airline security is stringent but clearly there’s an issue when the same boarding pass can be used to board one flight twice?”
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