A family of four senior citizens was kicked off a United Airlines flight from Tampa to Chicago after boarding due to a very odd ticketing issue that raises substantial red flags about an online travel agency called Wholesale Flights.
Senior Citizen Family Kicked Off United Airlines Flight For Invalid Tickets
The incident occurred in March 2023, but the family has only recently come forward to publicize their story. In August 2022, Wendi Meehan booked a trip to Europe for her husband and her in-laws. The four would fly into Amsterdam where their river cruise would begin.
Meehan booked Tampa (TPA) – Chicago (ORD) – Frankfurt (FRA) – Amsterdam (AMS), with a return from Portugal, on a website called Wholesale Flights.
The ticket was issued by Lufthansa and all appeared well. In fact, Meehan’s in-laws have premier status on United and were even upgraded to first class from TPA-ORD. Check-in was the first sign something was wrong. Thier boarding passes said “paper ticket required,” though an agent at the airport said not to worry about it and sent them on their way.
They boarded the flight. But prior to departure, a member of ground staff came onboard and asked that all four get off the plane. It was explained that their tickets were invalid.
So what happened?
United actually provided a rather high degree of detail to WFTS, the ABC affiliate in Tampa:
“The Winger family used a travel agency that was restricted from selling United tickets. Their reservation was ticketed under Lufthansa; however, the first leg of their trip was on United. The agency received several ‘unauthorized sell’ messages to alert them of the issue on the itinerary. The United reservation was issued as a ‘paper ticket’ – meaning, a gate agent would need to review their reservation upon boarding (which is how they were able to clear check-in, security, etc). It’s understood that the gate agent allowed the Winger family to board before syncing their ticket in an effort to keep from delaying the flight. Immediately after the agent attempted to clear the ticket, they found the issues with the reservation, which is why the customers needed to be taken off the plane.”
That’s quite a lengthy explanation.
Here’s the odd thing: the family reached out to Wholesale Flights, which set them up with a new ticket the following day. They had no trouble flying, despite it coming from the same source. Asked about that, United said, “We don’t have any further information to share.”
What Really Happened?
It is unclear precisely what may have gone wrong, but I have a theory.
I checked out Wholesale Flights and it looks like the type of website that buys frequent flyer miles and credit card points from people and then uses those to book tickets, offering premium cabin tickets at less than retail because the points are purchased so cheaply.
That may not have occurred here: typically there is an actual travel agency arm of these sorts of websites that can also book tickets and may take advantage of ticketing tricks like hidden city and end-on-end ticketing to produce a lower fare. Sometimes specially-negotiated corporate discounts might be used even though the travelers do not work for that company.
Here specifically it seems that the reservation (the flights that would have been visible when pulling up the reservation or even potentially checking in) and the underlying ticket were out of sync (did not match). We do not know why.
But whatever the specific source of these airline tickets, United flagged them as fraudulent, which is an important reminder that there is a certain peace of mind that comes from booking directly with an airline.
The fact that the family used the same website to book tickets on United the following day and had no issues suggests either that some issues fall through the cracks or that there was a specific problem with the manner in which their prior ticket was issued.
CONCLUSION
A family of four was booted off their United Airlines flight in Florida for holding invalid tickets to Europe. While the specific nature of the problem was vague, their use of a website called Wholesale Flights to book flights was blamed. I would caution you against using websites like that to book travel: it is often not clear how sites like that are able to offer flights for so cheap. If it looks too good to be true, it often is…
image: Wendi Meehan
a certain peace of mind that comes from booking directly with an airline.
Given the LOT story over at one mile at a time id say booking directly with an airline does not necessary help.
Not necessarily, but that is a very rare anomaly.
The reality is that in a sense that LOT issue was a third party booking as it was a reward ticket via Aeroplan. Though different circumstances it is still showing that there are cracks in the system that airlines need to figure out.
Anyone have a link to the LOT story?
United’s system SUCKS in any case – when I canceled an actual ticket and since they refused to reissue it with an LX flight number for me to upgrade, I canceled it and booked directly with Swiss.
Then it ends up that the United ticket was never canceled – even after 4-5 days and the LX agent checking me in issues me a BP for that canceled ticket – which I never realized. (More BS occurred later, but United’s system simply sucks….)
Oh yes, tried to cancel an LH award 6 hours before the flight and United said it was canceled – never actually did the cancellation – just absolutely ridiculous.
https://onemileatatime.com/news/lot-polish-beijing-denied-boarding-fraud-fiasco/
I feel the same about hotels, never understood why places like Hotels.com, etc have gotten so big when the same rate is always available direct.
I know why: hotels.com used to give you 10% cash back (book 10 nights, get 1 free). It was my favorite site for work travel. Now the site is horrible. The new rewards is you have to book 50 nights to get 1 free… I deleted the app and no longer use them.
Weird things can happen even when booking with the airlines. Ten years ago I bought a UA award ticket for my son (using my miles). Ticket showed being issued, I could access it online. When checking in at BNA, the UA agent said he cannot find the ticket. I gave him the record locator number, e-ticket number, she said no, it is not there. I showed her the reservation on my app, she said doesn’t matter, it is not in her system. After 40 minutes of despair, finally another agent came over, and I do not know what he did, but then printed out a boarding pass and let him check his luggage. No apologies from either of them. We felt totally helpless. Still do not know why this happened.
Basically the agent who gave you the BP was seasoned and associated the ticket number to your booking record as somewhere it got split. Happens and new agents have no clue.
I know many people out there are not very savvy when it comes to travel but I only buy whatever related to travel directly from the source. It is not worth it derail an entire trip over saving a few dollars.
Well, it can often be more than just a “few dollars.” I obtained a J on LH from Tunis to Washington via MUC this summer for $1100.00 one way. It was thousands more on the LH site. My criteria is that I have to at least know the company selling it as being legitimate and I right away bring the reservation over to the airline site to get seats etc and assure that it’s recognized. I have never had issues over the years using this formula though, agreed, if the same I will of course book via the airline directly.
You make a good point. It has to be legit. I just think that when on vacation with my family I want to minimize risk of anything going wrong. I worry about the fine prints on what you can and cannot do in case of cancellation for example.
Which website was this?
The opposite happened to me some years ago. I had booked a AA One World itinerary and went to my flight in Rome airport and was told I had a valid paper ticket but they couldn’t find my electronic ticket number. The Iberia gate agent was unhelpful so I took a bus to the AA terminal where the agent was deliberately unhelpful. A friend knew the head of AA in Rome and he solved the problem in minutes but I missed my flight and had to get a hotel and stay another day waiting for a flight.
The ticket must have been issued as an LH ticket so as to get around UA’s refusal to do business with that website. The gate agent undoubtedly told the people to get on board and would figure out how to “pull” the ticket later. “Later”, but before the door was closed, the gate agent must have figured out that this was a “travel agency” that was not accredited by UA and thus UA would not be able to “pull” the ticket and thus not get paid.
Sad, but the only way to get the attention of a business is to shame them on social media or television.
Otherwise, you’re just one of thousands of poor shmucks complaining!!
As an example, the US 30k miles give away only came about because Kirby was caught cheating on social media with his private jet escapade. With out the social media, Kirby would have told the passages to suck it up!!
Really sounds like United’s issue is with the OTA, not with these individuals. So why take it out on them, especially last minute when they have connecting flights booked on one of their partner airlines? Does United expect passengers to know which sites they are feuding with at any given time? If they’re going to go that route, they should just allow direct bookings only like Southwest.
they interact with the passenger because it s a lot harder to interact with the OTA
The agency was not “plated” for selling UA. Likely they got caught doing dodgy stuff and IATA pulled their plates. Didn’t stop them from selling which is illegal and anything they sell is invalid. This is what happened. The issue is not with UA but IATA.
Its like people buying drugs online and getting placebos. Nothing to do with drug company….
LOVE reading how everyone knows everything and you all do not.
But if they were authorized to sell on LH and sold a codeshare LH-issued ticket, why is that still a problem?
Way back in the day (that day being the 90’s), there was a mileage broker who layered her mileage ticket brokerage their tickets with a massive Ponzi scheme . Thousands of tickets were at issue.
Interesting read, but I know an honest broker who got caught up in this and Delta ended up winning a $9 mill judgment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Plus
Another issue I have with some of these small intermediaries is that my money is paid to them and not the airline. But, financially speaking, who are they and where is my money?
Before United “merged” with Continental they had a vastly superior reservations system called Apollo. But the overlords at Continental weren’t having it and they stuck with their antiquated, obsolete SHARES system. The only thing Continental got rid of was their bad name and the “new” airline was called United. The rest is history.