American Airlines keeps mistaking 101-year-old passenger for baby
American Airlines keeps mistaking 101-year-old passenger for baby
An IT glitch leaves the cabin crew expecting to welcome a baby on board rather than a centenarian.
A 101-year-old woman keeps getting mistaken for a baby because of an error with an airline's booking system.
The problem occurs because American Airlines' systems apparently cannot compute that Patricia, who did not want to share her surname, was born in 1922, rather than 2022.
The BBC witnessed the latest mix-up, which she and the cabin crew were able to laugh off.
“It was funny that they thought I was only a little child and I’m an old lady!” she said.
But the centenarian says she would like the glitch to be fixed as it has caused her some problems in the past.
"Ma'am, are you a baby?"
Is there a discount?
"Yes, children under 5 fly free."
Then I am a baby.
They made an, in hindsight, extremely creepy movie on this subject back in the 40s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Major_and_the_Minor
(I love Billy Wilder, but ick.)
However babys cannot fly alone so she needs an adult who pays a normal ticket to accommodate her.
Thanks for "Ackshually"-ing an obvious joke. Please see the Yes, and... rule of thumb.
I'm quite impressed she's still able to travel at 101. My mum's in her mid eighties and really struggles now.
Is this like the millennial bug? They just forgot to add an extra two digits because they didn't think humans would live that long?
You: "two digits...?"
Life as a head in a jar is a solemn and dignified life.
Three digit ages wasn’t in the requirements, so its out of scope. Maybe we’ll deal with it next phase. Surely that 101 year old lady can wait a few years for us to fix that bug right?
It turns out the 101 year old lady is more agile than the code
It's a feature!
Airport techies: next few years? Son, this has to work the next few decades. Now give me a mo, I have to write this DOS batch script.
Is this like the millennial bug?
Certainly sounds like it. The whole issue was that if year was a two-digit value, it was always interpreted as 19xx. Some systems were updated to require 4-digit years, but many (especially older, niche systems, which plenty of airlines still operate on) just kicked the can down the road. Some made a new static cutoff date for determining 19/20 that someone will have to fix in X years, or a range based on the current date, which sounds like what happened here. Birthdate stored as 25? That means 1925. Birthdate stored as 23? That means 2023.
Any coders out there want to deal with decades-old tech debt for the remainder of your career? Pick up COBOL and live the dream.
I've taken an intro to programming class with Fortran 77, how do I leverage that into a job?
Sorry, you predate or postdate the epoch. Please come back once you've de-Schrodingered
I always put a date right around the turn of the century (1900's not 2000's) on websites that insist on having me provide a date.
Feb 29 1904 - 120 years ago and a leap day.
Feeds Nemoy fish flakes
2 digits to the birth year.
They dont put 101 years old in their database they write in 1923.
When they made the booking program they had such limited memory for their computer that they just stored 23 and removed the 19.
The assumption was that the companies would continually update and redo their systems to fix this flaw as computers got more powerful.
Turns out that late stage capitalism is unable to make the small investments to keep up with infrastructure improvements so here we are with planes that fall apart and booking systems running on floppy disks.
Could easily be intentional …
- Boss: add validation so people can’t enter an invalid age
- Coder: let’s see,100 is really treaty old, I’m sure no one can fly if they’re that old
We fixed this 124 years ago...
At least choose an 8-bit digit for the ages of passengers! You'd have to live to be 256 to roll that over!
Might as well play it safe and make it a 16-bit integer on the off chance the world doesn't end and we quadruple our life expectancy
I had to fight an annoying bug like this in our companys frontend code once. That specific country's pretty-date settings insisted on returning only the last two digits of a year, and the UI framework's date input field read it like that before parsing it back to a date.
Meanwhile in America: your baby isn't covered by Medicaid because it isn't born yet.
"Ma'am, are you sure you're old enough to travel by yourself?"
"Oh hohohoho, stop!"
Just like my table-waiting days. You want to make a woman's day, just ask to see some ID when she orders alcohol because anyone who appears to be under 20 must be carded.
Do airlines typically handle 1 year olds flying alone? That seems nuts.
Hey if they book it with their own credit card they're probably fine.
She could be a baby.
I've definitely seen uglier babies.
Especially newborns.
Is it really that hard to lie about your age
She's 101. Fuck no would I lie about my age if I was 101. I'd brag about it.
"All those bullies back in high school? Fuck you, I outlived every last one of you assholes!"
On a plane? The details you enter have to match your ID.
TSA will send you back to the ticket gate if your ID doesn't match booking details.