Passenger Removed from Delta Airlines Flight After Boarding Without a Ticket

A passenger was removed from a Delta Airlines flight Saturday morning when airline representatives discovered the woman did not have a ticket.

The flight that was supposed to leave Orlando, Florida, for Atlanta at 10:20 a.m. was delayed until 1:13 p.m. after the crew was forced to rescreen all the passengers onboard.

Reports said the Orlando Police Department responded to a call about a “suspicious person” at about the time the plane was scheduled to depart.

“Upon officers arrival, the passenger had been escorted off the plane by Delta representatives,” the department said. “Delta representatives asked a female passenger who was sitting in someone else’s seat to produce a boarding pass in which she could not.”

However, a TSA representative said the woman in question did go through security, according to Business Insider.

The passenger whose seat the woman took told reporters that she refused to move when a flight attendant requested she do so.

“I also had a boarding pass for that seat, and she said very bluntly, ‘I’m not moving,'” the passenger commented.

Reports said the woman in question told authorities she threw her boarding pass away and showed them a picture of herself on her phone when they asked to see her identification. Once the flight attendants informed her that she was breaking federal law, the pilot called the police who arrived shortly afterward.

On Saturday night, Delta issued an apology to its customers regarding the incident.

The apology stated:

Delta apologizes to customers of flight 1516 for the delay after a person not ticketed for that flight was removed from the aircraft. Security officials then directed precautionary rescreen of everyone onboard. Delta is working with local law enforcement and the Transportation Security Administration on their investigation and we are conducting our own review of this as well. 

“It was really scary, now that I look back on it,” said the passenger whose seat the woman reportedly took. “I want to know what her intentions were, because it just shouldn’t have happened.”