Airline Error: Passenger flown to Jamaica Instead of Florida

A case of shocking airport mix-up aired as Beverly Ellis-Hebard, ended up flying to Jamaica in place of Jacksonville, Florida. She often travels between Pennsylvania and Florida. This mistake reportedly was caused by the negligence of Frontier Airlines at the Philadelphia’s Airport.

Ellis-Hebard, who regularly travels to her second home in Florida, was preparing for what she thought would be a routine trip. She went to the ladies’ room while waiting for the flight to board. A flight agent told her she had 20 minutes before the plane would leave. But when she returned, Ellis-Hebard said, nearly everyone was already boarding.

In a rush, she got on the plane after an agent scanned her boarding pass. Ellis-Hebard actually had an accident upon boarding when she was loading her hand luggage onto the plane. The wound attracted the attention of a flight attendant, who told her that she could rest when they got to Jamaica.

Thinking this was a joke, Ellis-Hebard answered, “I would love to be going there but I have a beach where I live.” But the earnest reaction of the attendant showed that this was no joke. The attendant said, “This plane is going to Jamaica.”

Still reeling from the disorientation of her injury and the rush to catch her flight, Ellis-Hebard was not apprised of a gate change on her flight to Jacksonville and wound up on the wrong plane. The flight attendant tried to impress upon her what a dire situation she was in, saying, “You’re entering a different country without a passport. That’s bad.”

But the good news is that when she reached Jamaica, Ellis-Hebard was only permitted to stay in the jetway, meaning that the area between the plane and the airport had not officially entered the country. Many hours after the first plane had already taken off, she was put on the next flight back to Philadelphia.

Speaking on the incident after the fact, Ellis-Hebard said, “It should have never happened because I did not have a passport. The woman at the gate did not do her job.”

Frontier later issued an apology and refund for the original ticket price to her while also giving her a $600 voucher in good will. The airline said, “We deeply apologize to Beverly Ellis-Hebard for this unfortunate incident. We sincerely regret that Ms. Ellis-Hebard was able to board the wrong flight.”