Delta Gave A Passenger Someone Else’s Boarding Pass, Then Let The Real Customer Board Too

A man reportedly boarded Delta Air Lines flight 881 from Minneapolis to Seattle on Thursday evening using another passenger’s boarding pass. And Delta apparently printed it for him. When the actual passenger scanned the same boarding pass, Delta’s system rejected it because he was already recorded as being onboard. The gate agent waved him through anyway. The real passenger walked onto the aircraft and found someone sitting in his seat. Delta Apparently Printed The Wrong Person’s Boarding Pass According to a passenger on the flight, the man had a valid ticket to Seattle on another airline. He approached Delta, and his last name actually matched the first name of a passenger assigned to seat 10C. Coincidence! Delta printed the man a boarding pass for 10C and gave it to him. He boarded the flight with the real boarding pass, and everything seemed fine until the actual passenger assigned to that seat arrived. Another passenger reports: The real guy said he got an error beep when he scanned but they told him to go ahead anyways and found the guy in his seat when he got on. A flight attendant confronted the man and instructed him to get off the plane and speak with the gate agent. Instead, according to the passenger account, “he booked it and ran away.” Everyone onboard then had to deplane while the aircraft got a security sweep. Two Failures Let This Happen There appear to have been two separate Delta failures at the gate. an employee printed a boarding pass for someone who was not the passenger named on the reservation, without asking for ID. when the actual passenger presented his boarding pass, Delta’s system recognized that it had already been scanned. The gate agent had them board anyway, instead of checking on the aircraft. If the flight had had an empty seat, and the man had simply apologized for being in the wrong seat and moved when challenged (and, perhaps, hidden in the lavatory until boarding complted and then taken the empty seat) he might have flown without anyone noticing even though the passenger count would have been off. Delta Has Made This Exact Mistake Before Delta has actually had a rash of passengers boarding planes without boarding passes, and this incident is remarkably similar to what happened on Delta flight 1683 from Salt Lake City to Austin in March 2024. Wicliff Yves Fleurizard had been trying to get home from a snowboarding trip using a Southwest Airlines buddy pass, but the flights were full. He photographed the boarding pass of a child traveling alone and used it to board Delta. When the child later presented the same boarding pass, Delta’s system flagged that the passenger was already onboard. But since the child was obviously standing at the gate, the agent overrode the warning and allowed the child to proceed. Fleurizard hid in the lavatories during boarding. He was caught only because the flight was full and he eventually emerged looking for an empty seat. By then the aircraft was taxiing and had to return to the gate. He was arrested and faced a federal stowaway charge. Delta’s String Of Stowaway Problems This isn’t the first time Delta has found someone onboard who wasn’t supposed to be there. In 2019, a woman without identification or a boarding pass blended in with families at the Orlando TSA checkpoint, joined wheelchair preboarding and boarded a Delta flight to Atlanta. She was found in someone else’s seat after the plane had pushed back. Passengers were removed and rescreened. In April 2024, passengers reported that five apparent stowaways were discovered on a Delta flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles. Two were removed from duplicate Comfort+ seats before departure, while three others apparently made it all the way to Los Angeles before being removed by police and the FBI. The exact method they used to board was never established. In November 2024, Svetlana Dali boarded a Delta flight from New York to Paris without a boarding pass and spent much of the transatlantic flight moving between lavatories because the plane was full. She was discovered only as the flight approached Paris. On Christmas Eve 2024, an unticketed passenger boarded Delta flight 487 from Seattle to Honolulu and was caught while the aircraft was taxiing. The plane returned to the gate, the passenger hid in a terminal restroom, and everyone onboard had to be rescreened. The flight was delayed more than two hours. In August 2025, a passenger ticketed to Los Angeles somehow boarded Delta’s New York–Las Vegas flight using a boarding pass for a different flight. One flight attendant initially proposed carrying him to Las Vegas and booking him a connection to Los Angeles, before another crew member pointed out that he wasn’t on the manifest. The aircraft returned to remove him. The remarkable thing about flight 881 is that it didn’t require someone to sneak behind a family, bypass the boarding scanner or hide in a lavatory. Delta allegedly handed the man another passenger’s boarding pass. Then the airline’s system caught the problem—and a Delta employee let the real passenger board without investigating it. Delta Has Taken Steps To Avoid Just This Sort Of Problem In response to the rash of incidents Delta has experienced with passengers boarding planes who aren’t supposed to be on them, the airline started installing bright red floor markers before gate podiums and telling passengers that only one person or party should cross the line at a time. Delta officially described this merely as making boarding “more orderly and smooth,” but the real purposes were: Prevent a stowaway from attaching themselves to a legitimate passenger group and entering the jet bridge unnoticed without a scan of their boarding pass. Keep the next passenger out of a biometric cameras field of view, reducing false or confused facial matches. Give a lone gate agent a clearer view of everyone entering while simultaneously scanning passes, handling bags and providing customer service. That didn’t help here, because each passenger did scan their boarding pass. The gate agent just made a mistake boarding someone with the wrong boarding pass, and then boarding someone else with the correct one when their seat showed occupied. Topics on this page