How do you even dress yourself in the morning???

So we are leaving Charlotte this morning, headed up to Chicago, and they start boarding the airplane. We close the doors, push back, start the engines, and start to taxi, just like every other flight, right? Well, not quite. As we get down towards the runway, we get in line to takeoff, and we were number 12. Not unusual in the morning rush. We slowly work our way up to number 3 and one of the flight attendants call up to the flight deck. The Captain and I look at each other as it is "sterile" which means anytime on the ground or below 10,000' any communication must be of an emergency basis only. I answer the call, thinking someone is having a heart attack or something. Thankfully that was not the case. Someone had discovered he was on the wrong plane! WHAT?? Well guess what --- it now becomes a security breach to have someone on the wrong aircraft, so we have to return to the gate and figure all this out.

I am trying for the life of me to figure out how this happened. Number 1, he was supposed to be at the next gate over going to Washington, DC, which left 45 minutes after we did, so the gate and times did not match up. The announcements the agents at the gate made I am sure all said the flight number and CHICAGO. Okay, don't know how you missed that one either. The agents messed up though, because rather than processing all the tickets through the computer, the system was down so they were doing it manually, but did not notice that he had a ticket for D.C. Then he gets on our plane and the flight attendants make their announcements including that this is going to Chicago. I make our announcement with the flight time, weather and all that, and I know for sure I said Chicago at least twice. None of that got through to this guy though. He did not figure it out until he was talking to the passenger next to him and realized everyone else was going to Chicago. I am surprised this guy was able to walk and talk at the same time. How do you miss ALL OF THESE things. One, I can remotely understand...but 10 things. Come on.

As he was getting off, I was talking to the gate agent as the Captain was talking to the TSA supervisor, as there had to be a security sweep. The man walked by and I just happened to look at him, and his shirt caught my eye. The saying on it fit him perfectly: "Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines" and of course there was a nice weasel under the saying. I am pretty sure this guy as not soared in anything in his life. Oh well...I guess that is life when you are dealing with the public.



Actually they are kind of cool looking!