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Woman Recounts Wrong Flight To Puerto Rico

News Channel 8 photo by MICHAEL EGGER

Elfreide Kuemmel said one airline employee took her by the wheelchair and simply dropped her off near a gate during her strange journey.

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By JEFF PATTERSON

Published: November 20, 2008

Elfreide Kuemmel first began to suspect that something wasn't quite right when she boarded the plane that she thought was going to Tampa.

"On the plane, they spoke a lot of Spanish more than usual." Kuemmel said. It would take several more hours – and a flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico – to confirm her suspicions.

Kuemmel's trip from Tampa to upstate New York was supposed to last only a day for the 83-year-old.

Kuemmel said she flew to upstate New York to make arrangements to move back closer to lifelong friends. "I could have stayed, but I wanted to do it in one day," she said, because she has birds here in her home and didn't want to leave them for too long.

Her planned trip took Kuemmel back through Philadelphia for a connecting flight to Tampa. "That's where the trouble started," she said.

Kuemmel said one airline employee took her by the wheelchair and simply dropped her off near a gate.

"This man took me in the rest and he took me, it was B6, I will never forget it, there was a lot of people there," Kuemmel said.

She said the gate area was very crowded, but she went to the ticket agent at the gate to confirm she was in the right place. The gate agent told her that she was in the right place and that the flight would soon be boarding.

As people began to get up to board the plane, Kuemmel said, she asked a man standing nearby what the overhead announcement was, because the person making the announcement spoke so quickly.

The man told her they were beginning to board the flight by zones. "So when my time came I went up to the girl, she took my ticket, she tore it and let me go in, simple as that."

Kuemmel's daughter, who runs a travel business, was on the phone for more than a half-hour with an airline employee in Puerto Rico before they could both determine that her mother was in the wrong airport, in the wrong city and not even in the continental United States.

US Airways eventually paid for a meal for their passenger, put her up in a hotel and flew her back to Tampa in the first class section the next day. When she arrived back in Tampa she was greeted by her daughter and a group of reporters and photographers.

On her arrival she tried to hide herself with a scarf, she said, because she hadn't been able to fix her hair or put on her makeup.

National network morning shows and others have called to ask for her side of the story, but so far she has declined.

"I'm not a movie star," she said.

Reporter Jeff Patterson can be reached at jpatterson@wfla.com.

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