You Must’ve Been a Beautiful Baby, ‘cause Baby… We Still Think You’re an Infant
A centenarian traveler has been repeatedly classified on airplane trips as an infant-in-arms. Her skin must be amazing!
By Katie Compa · May 1, 2024
Disclaimer: While this article is based on a century of facts, it does contain some newborn satire.
The nineties truly are back. If you’re old enough to remember the frenzy building up to Y2K at the turn of the Willennium when people all over the world were afraid that in the New Year, their washing machines might glitch out and start attacking their refrigerators, then crank up the Destiny’s Child, because it’s time to welcome the new and improved technological capabilities of Y2K24.
A woman who was recently traveling, named Patricia, (she declined to share her last name, so we’re left to assume that preventing one’s own identity theft is a large factor in human longevity) is over 100 years old—good for her!
*Out of respect for her privacy, no photos used are actually of Patricia. Tom Margie/Flickr
Less favorably, Patricia has been mistakenly labeled by computers in American Airlines’ booking system—twice—as a baby, all because she’s lived such a long and healthy life and, to our knowledge, has never received blood transfusions from youngsters like some other rich guys we could name (but won’t as the majority are quite litigious). Then, she’d obviously be flying Business Class.
Evidently, the airline’s system can’t distinguish between the year 1922 (Patricia’s actual birth year) and 2022 (the birth year of her infant alter-ego).
Patricia travels every year to see family and chase warm weather in the wintertime. As though air travel weren’t fraught with difficulties even for the young and able-bodied, Patricia’s circumstances mean that the airline also doesn’t always know to provide wheelchair assistance for her inside the terminal–or for connections or arrival—which means her dutiful daughter, Kris, gets stuck with the job of personal valet. (We don’t know if anyone reading has ever traveled with a parent who needs lots of assistance, but please join us in fervently wishing continued blessings upon Kris.)
She’d be well within her rights to throw a tantrum and kick the seat in front of her nonstop, but in fact, we wouldn’t even know about this story had a BBC reporter not been on Patricia’s flight from Chicago to Marquette, Michigan (as we all know, Chicago does not serve Detroit-style pizza).
For her part, Patricia bears no ill will toward the airline, and added that every staff member who’s had to step in and help has been a pleasure to deal with (not much of a surprise—it’s mostly the other passengers who cause footage of the flight to end up on YouTube and the news). She says all she wants is for the airline to fix its computer system. We don’t know whether she realizes the magnitude of that request, but so say we all, Patricia—so say we all.