Due to an error with the online booking system, American Airlines keeps on mistaking a 101-year-old woman for a baby. The system mistakingly thinks Patricia, who was born in 1922, was instead born in 2022. Even though sometimes the glitch makes both Patricia and the crew laugh, other times, it causes quite uncomfortable circumstances.
The error came to light when Joe Tidy, a BBC-correspondent took the same flight connecting Chicago and Marquette as Patricia and was therefore able to witness the confusion. The woman, who was travelling with her daughter, was able to laugh it off this time.
“It was funny that they thought I was only a little child and I’m an old lady. My daughter made the reservation online for the ticket and the computer at the airport thought my birth date was 2022 and not 1922. The same thing happened last year and they were also expecting a child and not me”, she told BBC’s correspondent Joe Tidy.
Patricia travels every year in order to see her family and on a previous occasion, the woman and her daughter waited without any luck for a wheelchair to come and pick her up.
“I have some trouble with my eyesight now so I wouldn’t want to do it on my own. I would like them to fix the computer as my poor daughter had to carry all our luggage and apparel almost a mile from one gate to the other,” Patricia told the BBC.
It seems as if American Airlines’ system can’t handle a birthdate from over 100 years ago. Therefore, it automatically changes 1922 into 2022, which led airline crew to believe on multiple occasions that the woman would be carried aboard and thus wouldn’t need any further assistance. Therefore, even though the mistake makes her laugh at times, Patricia would like American Airlines to fix the error. The airline, however, hasn’t commented yet on their mistake. The next time Patricia will be flying will be this autumn, when she’ll be 102.
