Boarding pass mixup

bobblebob

My mate was on a flight with me recently with Ethiopian airlines. Got a boarding pass and sat at his seat. 5 mins later another guy came and said he was in his seat. Looking at both boarding passes they each had the same seat allocation in their own name

How is that possible? Surely the system issuing boarding passes shouldn't allow 1 seat to be allocated to 2 different people?

tomtontom

One person checks in, their allocation is for some reason changed but the boarding pass not reissued, another person is allocated to that seat. I assume the flight manifest had the correct information?

ramjug

Generally happens for overbooked flights.

Happened to me once, i sat on my seat but wasn't feeling well, so went to ask for water. When came back, there was a girl sitting in my seat and as i was about to ask her to show her boarding pass to confirm, i heard a guy calling my name and said the magic words 'Sir, you have upgraded to business class due to overbooking'.

bobblebob

Yea he got upgraded too

InsideInsurance

There's often a complex web of computers behind the scenes, particularly when you are talking code share flights and not all of them update 100% in real time. Of cause you arent just talking the airlines systems but travel agents and intermediaries etc.