A 101-year-old woman has been regularly mistaken for an infant because an airline’s booking system was unable to compute her date of birth. The woma

‘They thought I was a child’: US airline repeatedly registers 101-year-old as baby

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2024-04-28 16:30:07

A 101-year-old woman has been regularly mistaken for an infant because an airline’s booking system was unable to compute her date of birth.

The woman, named only as Patricia, was born in 1922, but the American Airlines system apparently does not recognise that year, defaulting instead to 2022, the BBC reported.

The centenarian was left on one occasion without her reserved wheelchair at a terminal because airport staff had expected a baby instead.

“It was funny that they thought I was only a little child and I’m an old lady,” said Patricia, a former nurse, who was travelling with her daughter Kris.

“My daughter made the reservation online for the ticket and the computer at the airport thought my birth date was 2022 and not 1922,” she told the BBC cyber correspondent, Joe Tidy, who witnessed the latest mix-up on a flight between Chicago and Marquette, Michigan, on which the reporter was also travelling.

“The same thing happened last year and they were also expecting a child and not me.” This was despite her being booked as an adult ticket, not a child’s.