"Where is the grandmother's baby?"... Airline staff surprised after checking the face

Airline System Mistakes 1922 Birth Year for 2022
Bug Presumed Due to Inability to Process 100-Year-Old Birthdates

A commotion occurred when a 101-year-old grandmother boarding a plane was mistakenly recognized as a 1-year-old baby due to an error in the reservation system of a U.S. airline.

Waiting for a 1-year-old baby but a 101-year-old grandmother appeared... laughed it off but "issues like no wheelchair prepared, improvement needed"

American Airlines aircraft. [Image source=AP Yonhap News]

On the 28th (local time), British broadcaster BBC and others reported that Patricia, who lives in the U.S., recently traveled with her daughter on American Airlines between Chicago and Market, Michigan, and was mistaken for a 1-year-old baby. The airline's reservation system failed to recognize Patricia's birth year of 1922 and mistakenly identified it as 2022. This error occurred even though she paid the adult fare when purchasing the ticket. Airline staff, who were expecting a 1-year-old baby, were startled when a 101-year-old grandmother appeared.

Patricia said, "My daughter booked my flight ticket online, but it seems the airport computer thought my birth year was 2022, not 1922," adding, "The same thing happened last year, so the airport staff were waiting for a baby, not me." Patricia, who traveled alone without family assistance until she was 97, added that this problem did not occur until she turned 100. It is presumed that the airport computer system could not process birth dates over 100 years old and instead set the birth date by adding 100 years as a default.

Although the staff and Patricia laughed off the incident, Patricia hopes the issue will be resolved quickly. Last year, while traveling with her daughter, Patricia had reserved a wheelchair to move around the airport after getting off the plane, but since she was mistakenly entered as a 1-year-old baby, no wheelchair was prepared, causing inconvenience. Patricia added, "My poor daughter had to carry all the luggage and walk 1 mile (1.6 km)." Nevertheless, she said she cannot give up flying due to IT problems and is looking forward to her next trip scheduled for the fall.

A bug that cannot process birth dates over 100 years old... resembles the 'Y2K bug'

This resembles the earlier 'Millennium Bug.' Early computer programmers omitted the first two digits '19' from the four-digit year notation to save memory space. However, when 1999 came, the upcoming year 2000 was represented as '00,' the same as 1900, causing fear that computers might malfunction due to the inability to distinguish the two years. The issue was expected to start occurring once the year 2000 arrived, sparking social controversy. For example, calculations that should have been for a few days might be computed as several hundred years. There were concerns that global financial networks and medical information systems might shut down. Thanks to sufficient preparations at the time, no major problems occurred, but since then, various minor and major incidents have happened in daily life, such as in 2014 in the U.S., when draft registration notices meant for those born between 1993 and 1997 were mistakenly sent to super-elderly people aged 117 to 121, born between 1893 and 1897.