<p>This was the second leg of our flight and was probably their second leg, too. You only need to show your first boarding pass to get through security. Let’s hope they had their names on that first boarding pass.</p>
<p>I’d call the TSA. Plus I’d call Delta and ask to talk to a supervisor. At the very least it seems those people flew for free. And at the worst… if Delta can’t keep track of who is on their planes, that is a HUGE security breach.</p>
<p>If they used the kiosk and mis-entered their confirmation number, perhaps it pulled up your confirmation. But they should have had to show ID with the boarding pass to get thru security, and to check bags.</p>
<p>None of this makes sense and all of it is creepy.</p>
<p>I will pile on that the explanation makes no sense and is likely a breach of TSA/FAA rules. I would have asked for the lead flight attendant to notify the pilot. </p>
<p>Take your miles from Delta, but notify TSA/FAA of the breach. Delta should be fined for this and the flight attendant and gate personnel re-trained on proper security procedures.</p>
<p>The first time I ever flew on an airplane I was very nervous and ended up getting so upset that I got sick to my stomach and started throwing up while seated in the plane. I was using all the airsickness bags I could find and in general was a big mess. While I was still throwing up the stewardess put a breakfast tray of sausage and scrambled eggs on the pull-down tray in front of me! I surely wasn’t in a mood for breakfast, but the stranger crowded up next to me was and he asked me if he could have my food if I wasn’t going to eat it…after he had just gobbled up his tray. The more he ate, the sicker and greener I got, and it didn’t seem to faze the other passenger one bit my puking all over the place while he ate my breakfast and drank coffee. I thought it was weird behavior.</p>
<p>^^^I kind of agree with you, but he could have just as easily labeled your behavior as pretty weird. It’s just an airplane, but you were freaking out…whereas most people are fine. Your behavior was rather extreme…</p>
<p>See, it’s all relative…;)</p>
<p>I was on an international flight for a college sponsored trip and was seated next to my professor. As the engines revved in preparation for takeoff he turned chalk white and clutched my arm in a death grip. I held his hand for takeoff, after which he was able to explain his behavior. Turns out he had been among the hostages held for a week at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda. He told me the terrorists took hostages among the hostages- they separated out the children and told the adults that if anyone tried to escape the first to be shot would be the kids. My professor’s young son was among them.</p>
<p>On the lighter side, in the movie “Raid on Entebbe” there is apparently a scene where one character gives another “the Good Book” to comfort him and stave off boredom. My professor said the donor was him, except he told the other man it was “a good book” and the book was not a bible, but a volume of Shakespeare!</p>
<p>I had boarded the plane for short trip (about 50 minutes). I had the window seat and there was another passenger, an older woman, in the aisle seat. At the very last minute, just before the doors were closed, a well groomed, early 40ish women was escorted onto the plane. She had cast on one arm and was carrying a enormous designer bag plus a smaller purse. She looked around, then took the center seat next to me.</p>
<p>After she settled herself, she tried to strike a up a conversation w/ the woman on the aisle who ignored her so she turned to me. Her first words were: “I’m on my way to New Haven because someone murdered my sister.”</p>
<p>Her story got progressively more and more bizarre. She celebrity named dropped all over the place, explained how she was dying of brain cancer and had only 3 months to live, had broken arm when someone had tried to push her off a cliff, how she was a MD with specialities in psychiatry, oncology, neurology and something else. I heard all about her wedding, her mother’s murder 4 years earlier, her sister’s murder, her cancer surgery, her lawsuits against her cancer surgeons, her stays at the homes various celebrities and a truly bizarre story about Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crow, with whom she claimed to be very close friends.</p>
<p>I was listened quietly without comment as she rattled on for the entire hour. (The women on the other side had all but disappeared into her magazine.) Just before we were about to land–she asked what airport we were approaching. When I told her, she yanked out her boarding pass and showed it to me----she was on the wrong plane!</p>
<p>After deplaning, I was heading rapidly off to meet my ride when the women literally chased down the concourse and insisted on hugging me goodbye.</p>
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<p>I’ve told this story to several friends. One of whom found it amusing enough to repeat it for her neighbors–who happen to be novelists. (They write 2 well-selling series of detective novels.) The novelists found this strange woman’s opening line intriguing enough that they asked my permission to use it in one of their books.</p>
<p>So if you ever see a murder mystery that starts with a women on plane proclaiming she’s on her way to New Haven because someone murdered her sister–then you’ll know where it came from.</p>
<p>I keep waiting for someone to post that during a flight, they saw a creature tampering with wiring outside on the wing, but every time they tried to alert someone else to it, the creature hid.</p>
<p>LOL WayOutWestMom, that’s a good one.</p>
<p>My mom and I were on a flight where we had to switch plans due to the first plane’s windshield being in danger of coming off during flight (!). The pilot was desperate to make up time and was evidently gunning it–because as were approaching our destination he got on the intercom and told us to look out the window. Apparently, we had been “racing” an Air Canada flight to the airport, and air traffic control had told our pilot to slow down so that the Air Canada jet could land. As a result, we ended up descending in heavy wake turbulence–it literally felt like the plane was rolling back and forth, and I was dizzy for a couple of hours afterwards. Mom and I both decided that we would had rather gotten in a little later rather than go through a descent like that!</p>
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<p>Loved that scene from The Twilight Zone movie. John Lithgow was great in that one. Never saw the original one from the show starring William Shatner.</p>
<p>Love sitting next to the demented lady. </p>
<p>On a flight to Florida, a woman next to me asked me I had found Jesus. I said with a smile, “I didn’t know he was lost.” She tried to convert me until I said that I was Jewish and happy about it. It seemed like she’d never met someone who was Jewish (hard to believe given that she was flying to Florida) and wanted to know about all of our customs. Since I grew up in a somewhat observant family, there were lots of customs. But, at least she stopped trying to convert me.</p>
<p>I feel bad for the “demented” lady. Clearly she was someone with serious psychological issues, out of touch with reality - and she ended up alone, in the completely wrong city. I think that’s sad and scary. (Although I can see how sitting next to her would be alternatingly annoying and hilarious. Probably felt like being on “Candid Camera” or “Punked!”)</p>
<p>A couple of years ago I got onto a flight and was seated next to a woman a few years younger than me. We exchanged pleasantries, then they closed the cabin door and we started taxiing, only to be told we had been put on “ground hold” due to weather on our route. The woman became tense, and told me she had a fear of airplanes. She then clarified that it wasn’t flying that scared her - it was sitting still in a closed plane, it made her claustrophobic. As long as she knew we were on our way to our destination, she was fine, but this SITTING and NOT MOVING… I replied that I was fine when we were safely sitting on the ground, but I do NOT deal well with turbulence, which it looked like we were going to be getting. So we made a deal. I chatted about nothing and everything while we were stuck on the ground to distract her, and when we were airborne and turbulence hit she told me her life story to distract me. It worked great. After we landed, we stopped on the tarmac and the pilot announced we had to wait for a gate to open up. My companion turned to me with big eyes and said, “Your turn again!” We both laughed.</p>
<p>Re: the crazy lady</p>
<p>What I can’t figure out is that she was escorted by airline personnel onto the plane–so how did she manage to board the wrong plane? Didn’t the gate attendant or anyone else even look at her boarding pass? It clearly had a different destination city printed on the pass. (Although I will admit the initial letter of both cities was the same.)</p>
<p>While the strange lady clearly had issues, she wasn’t non-functional. I pointed out to her where the airline customer service desk was (after she’d chased me down to hug me) and she was heading there to get re-ticketed to the correct destination last I saw her.</p>
<p>This is relatively minor, but given the general environment on planes these days I thought it odd. The inbound flight was slightly late so my outbound flight was a little late too, and there were some paperwork issues delaying us even further. We were finally ready to go. A 20-something man decided he was going to ignore the announcement to turn off all electronic equipment and continue to listen to his iPod. He directly refused the flight attendant’s request to turn off his iPod, and responded “no” to the question “are you going to comply with the flight attendant’s directions.” He was escorted to the front of the plane and asked to deplane. He argued there for another 5 minutes with all the flight attendants, saying of course he was going to ignore their request since the flight was so late. Who DOES that? Finally the gate attendant escorted him off and called security. </p>
<p>The man next to me and I agreed that the flight attendants had been way too nice (Southwest).</p>
<p>WayOutWestMom your story reminds me of the time a teen got on a plane thinking he was going to Oakland and ended up in Aukland. This was pre-9/11, I believe, and big news at the time.</p>
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<p>An idiot with entitlement issues. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I remember going through airport security during ~1973 or '74, and now I’m wondering what the instigating factor was to require such security. This was when I was traveling in Canada. Does anyone remember??</p>
<p>Years ago I was on a flight to London. There was a seat between me and this nice enough guy with very long dreadlocks as well as very, very long toe nails. After take off he started to do all sorts of personal “things” starting with putting his hair into a half bun, half pony tail. The he did a bunch of stretches starting with the neck, then the arms, then the legs. He was very flexible. Up next ---- he swung one leg over on to the empty seat between us and started to clip the very, very long toe nails! Ewwwww!!! At this point I had had enough! I got up and found a flight attendant and asked to have my seat moved. We still had a long flight ahead and I did not want to know what would come after the nail clipping!</p>
<p>wayoutwestmom - you’re right, the part about her being escorted onto the plane by airline personnel is confusing! Although perhaps someone knew she was delusional enough to need help getting to her destination. Sounds like the earlier story with Delta ignoring two sets of passengers holding identical boarding passes (same names and seat numbers). Makes me wonder how many of these glitches happen every day.</p>
<p>We were once on a late night flight, the last leg of a long journey home. The plane had pulled away from the gate and turned to taxi when we stopped and the pilot came on the plane. Turns out two teenage girls in the back row were supposed to be going to Buffalo, and our plane was going to Boston. (Apparently when the pilot made the “from the flight deck, our expected flying time to Boston is…” they realized they were on the wrong plane). We had to wait to be pushed back to the gate and have the jetway pulled out, and those girls had a long walk down the aisle with a lot of GLARING passengers to de-plane. I believe this was pre-9/11 though.</p>
<p>Just had a thought… perhaps the reason the flight attendants and pilots usually repeat “welcome aboard flight 123 to Destination” several times is because people manage to board the wrong plane more times that we realize?</p>