There are plenty of people who have the same name. If you believe those online “search for people” websites, there are about 8 people in the US who share my name. In fact, my best friend has a first, middle and last name that are so common that her doctor has THREE patients who have the same 3 (first/middle/last) names—they all have to be I.D.ed by their date of birth.
Having the same name as a terrorist is an excellent way to continually get the dreaded SSSS on your boarding pass (fortunately, the TSA has a system in place so they may be able to stop getting SSSS on their passports). However, a 24-year-old woman was recently banned from American Airlines. How she found out was bad enough. Why they said she was banned was even worse. But at least the story had a happy ending. Well, sort of. Read on…
Banned from American Airlines
In June, Erin Wright planned to fly to her sister’s bachelorette party. She tried to check in on her phone for her American Airlines flight from Albuquerque to New Orleans but couldn’t. Meh, it happens, right? When she got to the airport, she tried to check in at one of their kiosks, but that didn’t work either. Weird. So she went to the airline’s help desk.
“I just went to the help desk from American Airlines and asked them to check me in and they were really nice,” Wright said in a TikTok video. “So they go to check in and it errors for them too. They’re like, ‘Oh don’t even worry. You probably just put your name or your birthday in wrong when you were entering your information when you bought the flight. Let us call someone and get it fixed.'”
The AA rep then spent 10 minutes on the phone, after which she told Wright something she never expected to hear.
“She’s like, ‘Ma’am, I’m really sorry to tell you this, but you’ve actually been banned from flying American Airlines,'” said Wright.
Wright knew it didn’t make sense for her to be banned from the airline, but the rep at the kiosk said she wouldn’t be able to help, “But the person on the phone, from security, told me that ‘you should know why’.”
Except she didn’t know why.
She continued: “She told me to call customer service. So I call customer service and they also tell me it’s an issue of internal security and I’m like, wait, why can’t you tell me if it involves me why. Is this, like an issue with security or confidentiality?”
But no one at American Airlines was willing to help Wright, and it started to dawn on her that whatever this issue was, it wasn’t going to be an easy fix. The best they could tell her was to contact Customer Relations…and you can only email them.
“I realized that I’m gonna miss my flight, and I just need to book another flight, so I quickly booked myself another $1,000 round-trip flight, day-of, to New Orleans,” she said. “Then I proceed to be like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna get this all cleared up, like they’ll refund me money, it’ll be fine.'”
She had 8 hours until her new flight would take off, so meanwhile, she emailed American Airlines’ Customer Relations department, asking why she had been banned and requesting a refund of the $1400 she had spent ($400 for the flight she booked when she was supposedly banned and $1000 for the new flight to NOLA).
The airline’s corporate security team finally responded several days later and told her they couldn’t tell her why she had been banned; she had to contact corporate security.
After another email, she finally heard back from corporate security, who informed her that the reason she had been banned was for having “sexual relations with a man on a flight, while intoxicated.”
Wait, what???
Wait, it gets better!
Wright then said in the video: “Well, let me tell you, I am a 24-year-old lesbian. Do you see me?” as she showed how she looked. “Am I having sexual relations with any man? No!”
She wrote back and explained to customer relations that they had the wrong person. It then took 12 days and numerous emails to fix the situation. She was told to send an official appeal and explain “exactly why I didn’t do it.”
“So I email them a very serious email but also somewhat funny because in it I’m like I don’t really know how to prove that it wasn’t me except for the fact that I’m literally a lesbian and I can like get you letters from other people telling you that that’s the truth,” said Wright.
Three months and several more email exchanges later, Wright said that she heard back from AA’s legal team.
“I get a call from someone, some guy being like, ‘Hey, we’ve reviewed your case and we’ve determined that it most likely was not you. So we’re going to take you off the no-fly list until further notice until we either figure out whether it was actually you or someone else,’ ” she said. “I asked if they could call me back and tell me what happened once they figure out how I ended up on the no-fly list and they told me no, because it would be confidential at that point, if it wasn’t actually me.”
Isn’t that nice?
Meanwhile Wright says that although she’s been removed from American’s no-fly list and reimbursed for the $400 AA flight they wouldn’t let her on, she wasn’t compensated for the replacement flight she booked or for any of the other expenses (or embarrassment!) she incurred because of the airline’s SNAFU.
Here’s her video:
@erin_wright_ Thanks for being the worst @American Airlines #storytime #funnystory #funnyvideos #airlinetiktok #airplanestory #funny #fyp
Sort of a happy ending
However, like I said, there is a happy ending. Besides being reinstated as a passenger in good standing with American, she had asked TikTok to essentially “blow up” her story on the platform. At last count, her video had over 3 million views. And with that, she got about $1000 in “TikTok Rewards,” which is the amount American Airlines wouldn’t reimburse her.
Wright says she’s looking into reaching out to the Department of Transportation and either filing a complaint or suing them in small claims court. Here’s her follow-up video:
@erin_wright_ Update!!! @American Airlines #storytime #airlinetiktok #airportlife #funnystory #funny
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