A 101-year-old seasoned traveler is tired of American Airlines treating her like a baby. But they keep mistaking her for an infant, due to a computer glitch.
Born in 1922, Patricia — a former nurse who wants to keep her last name anonymous — is a full-grown woman who still travels with her daughter. But because of her age and a less-than-modern booking system, the airline can't seem to ever properly process her reservation, expecting a child born in 2022 rather than a centenarian born one-hundred years earlier.
"It was funny that they thought I was only a little child and I'm an old lady!" she told the BBC, who witnessed one of Patricia's travel mix-ups. But she said it's not so "funny" when, thinking she's an infant who can be hoisted onto a grownup's hip, they neglect to bring her a wheelchair.
From the BBC:
The glitch the BBC witnessed happened when Patricia was flying between Chicago and Marquette, Michigan – a flight this reporter was also travelling on. …
"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 me. "The same thing happened last year and they were also expecting a child and not me." …
But it appears the airport computer system is unable to process a birth date so far in the past – so it defaulted to one 100 years later instead.
But she is adamant the IT problems will not put her off flying, and says she is looking forward to her next flight in the autumn.
By then she will be 102 – and perhaps by then the airline computers will have caught on to her real age.
