Almost Yellowknife bound
Two WestJet passengers with tickets to Grande Prairie accidentally board Canadian North plane to Yk
Randi Beers
Northern News Services
Published Friday, January 9, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Two travellers at Edmonton International Airport almost unwittingly ended up in Yellowknife late Sunday night after boarding the wrong plane.
The pair, carrying tickets for a WestJet flight from Edmonton to Grande Prairie, Alta., accidentally boarded Canadian North flight 422 to Yellowknife, and nobody noticed until the plane was about to depart.
Flight 422 was scheduled to depart Edmonton at 5:50 p.m., but aircraft problems delayed the flight by three hours. It was almost 9 p.m. when Canadian North started the boarding process, which happened simultaneously with boarding of a WestJet flight to Grande Prairie at an adjacent gate.
It was approximately 9:15 p.m. on the fully boarded Canadian North plane when an announcement came through the cabin for flight attendants to secure the doors and cross-check for departure.
But before the plane turned on its engines a passenger stood up, announced he was on the wrong plane and asked to disembark.
The man's concerns prompted a woman to also stand up and say she was on the wrong plane. Both passengers thought they were en route to Grande Prairie, which is 1,200 km south of Yellowknife.
Kelly Lewis, Canadian North's manager of communications, explained the security lapse that almost left these two people stranded in Yellowknife.
"There are four steps our employees should be following for verification … and it looks like the third step didn't happen," said Lewis.
The third step, after a ticketing agent checks identification before issuing a boarding pass and a gate agent checks the identification and boarding pass before boarding, is the screening of passengers as they board the aircraft.
"Flight attendants should be checking boarding passes as passengers board the plane," he explained.
"My understanding is things were running late and the flight crew was hurrying things along … it is our policy to check boarding passes – not all airlines do it but we still do."
On top of that, Lewis said, flight crew are required to do a head count to confirm the number of passengers on the plane matches the number of boarding passes checked by the gate agent.
"The staff on board the plane told me the first count they did didn't match up but they did another one and it did match up, so it seems they just went with the wrong head count," said Lewis, adding Canadian North's manager of flight safety has since sent out a reminder to staff about its policies and to take special care when doing head counts.
To compound things, Lewis explained Edmonton airport can be a "very busy facility", especially if two airlines at adjacent gates are boarding simultaneously, which was the case Sunday night.
"The passengers probably went to the WestJet counter and proceeded to the wrong door," he said.
"Airports are confusing and if you've been travelling awhile and you're tired it's possible to end up following the wrong crowd."
Although it's rare, Lewis said this sort of mistake is not unprecedented.
"It's Murphy's Law, it can happen," he said.
"In fact, the flight attendant I was talking to was laughing because years ago a flight attendant for another airline accidentally boarded one of our planes and ended up flying with us.
"It's rare, but if a couple (security) steps are missing, it can happen."
Lewis added had these two passengers made it all the way to Yellowknife with Canadian North, the airline would have taken care of the accommodations and helped them get to their intended destination. It's unknown whether the two passengers missed their flight to Grande Prairie.
