Flying to a different country always requires a passport in hand but traveling within your own country is smooth sailing without it. A New Jersey woman planning on heading to Florida was actually flown to Jamaica without her passport.
Instead of flying to Jacksonville, Florida, Beverly Ellis-Hebard was taken to Jamaica because of a gate change. Ellis-Hebard regularly flies from Philadelphia to her second home in Jacksonville and arrived for a flight that read “PHL to JAX.”
“I fly once every six weeks. I picked Frontier flights because we flew so often,” she said.
At the time of her flight, Ellis-Hebard asked a gate agent if she could quickly use the restroom. When she came back, the flight was almost fully boarded and she was rushed onto the plane.
“[The gate agent] said, ‘Come on, come on. Give me your boarding pass.’ I would say I took about ten steps, and she said, ‘Are you Beverly Ellis-Hebard?”‘ the New Jersey resident said. “I said, ‘You just had my boarding pass. You just checked me in. Yes!’ She said, ‘All right, go! Go.'”
Once she was on the plane, the flight crew told Ellis-Hebard that the Jacksonville flight had a gate change and that their plane was actually en route to Jamaica.
“I laughed. I said ‘I would love to be going there but I have a beach where I live,'” Ellis-Hebard said. “[The flight attendant] said, ‘Look at me. This plane is going to Jamaica.’ And I knew by the look on her face she wasn’t joking.”
Without a passport, Ellis-Hebard was unable to leave the plane once it landed in the country. She had to remain in the jetway, which is considered U.S. soil. Luckily, the flight crew stayed with her until her flight to Philadelphia took off several hours after she had landed in Jamaica without her passport.
Ellis-Hebard said that the flight mishap actually wasn’t the only problem she encountered on that trip. When she put her personal travel bag in the baggage sizer, she scraped her arm. “I put it in and when I went to take it out my arm right here got all scraped up. I was bleeding,” Ellis-Hebard said.
Thankfully, the frequent traveler was issued a refund as compensation from Frontier Airlines for the mishap.
“We sincerely regret that the customer was able to board the wrong flight and have extended our apologies,” a Frontier Airlines spokesperson said. “We have provided her with a refund and compensation as well as addressed the matter with airport personnel.”