A New Jersey woman who intended to visit Florida claims that a gate change caused her to go to Jamaica instead of Jacksonville.
Gloucester County resident Beverly Ellis-Hebard told WPVI that she regularly flies from Philadelphia to her second home in Jacksonville.
She arrived at a gate for her November 6 flight that read “PHL to JAX”.
“I fly once every six weeks. I picked Frontier flights because we flew so often,” she explained.
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 explained. “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 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 recalled. “[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.
She remained in the jetway, which she says is considered U.S. soil.
The flight crew stayed with her until her flight to Philadelphia took off several hours later.
Ellis-Hebard said that the flight mishap was not the only misfortune she experienced on the 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,” the traveler explained.
“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.”