‘American Airlines just stole $350 from me’: Traveler accused of ‘skipping a city’ to save money. She says they didn’t scan her boarding pass

An aggrieved American Airlines customer says she's out $350 after confusion over her flight schedule while attending a family member's funeral — and she contends the company's customer service added insult to injury.

The TikTok video documenting the situation comes from creator Liv Paxton (@things_recorded_by_liv), who shared that she recently flew from Baltimore/Washington International Airport (BWI) to Jacksonville, Florida, to attend her aunt's funeral. The trip included a layover in Charlotte, North Carolina.

She shared the clip Monday, getting more than 25,000 views to date.

"American Airlines just stole $350 from me," Paxton contends in her video, noting that the issue with the company started when she and her family made the six-hour drive from Jacksonville to Charlotte, North Carolina, where her return flight had been scheduled to Baltimore, Maryland.

"This morning, I was unable to check into my flight," she revealed. "So we went to the customer service line at the airport super early, and I was told that my reservation had been voided. I was told that they said that I skipped a city, that I got into Charlotte last Thursday, and I never flew to Jacksonville because my boarding pass was never scanned at the gate. However, that's absolutely untrue. I did get on a flight to Jacksonville."

@things_recorded_by_liv @American Airlines DO BETTER #flighthorrorstories #americanairlines #americanairlineshorrorstory ♬ original sound - Liv Paxton

Paxton explains further, "I arrived in Charlotte around like 9 a.m. and I was already in Jacksonville by noon. So there's no way I could have gotten off the plane or gotten out of the airport and driven to Jacksonville in three hours."

However, because American Airlines didn't have a record of her scanning her boarding pass for the Charlotte-to-Jacksonville leg, they contend she never flew to Jacksonville, even though she claimed to have time-stamped photo evidence that she made it to Jacksonville before she could have driven there, given when her plane landed in Charlotte.

"I thought it was scanned, but that's on them," she contends. "It's their fault that it was not scanned."

Paxton contends that the American Airlines customer service people were rude to her in their back-and-forth, wanting her to spend an additional $300 to replace the canceled ticket. "I was accused of a lot of things," she said. "I was accused of not going to the funeral, that was something they actually said." They also characterized her trip as a vacation, which Paxton called "weird and rude."

She also said, as she was recording the video, that she was "stuck" in Charlotte and about to miss work that day in Baltimore due to the mix-up.

Commenters in the original video wanted to know more.

"Were you supposed to be on a flight from Jacksonville to Charlotte on the way back and decided to go with your family instead?" one asked. "Because you would have had to book two separate tickets if your return flight home wasn’t leaving from the same destination airport you flew into."

Paxton responded, "No. I was ALWAYS supposed to fly from CLT to BWI. I was on that flight. I have photo evidence of me being in JAX before noon (wouldn’t have been possible had I skipped a flight)." She added, "It IS possible to book round trip out of different cities."

"Always make sure you hear the sound when you scan your boarding pass," advised one.

Paxton responded, "Honestly thought I did. They told me to get on the plane so idk what happened."

More than one commenter brought up "skip-lagging" in the comments, arguing that the airline may have voided her reservation under the impression that she did that.

According to Simple Flying, skip-lagging is a practice some consumers use to try to get better fares, though airlines frown on the practice because of what it entails—"booking an itinerary where the stopover is the actual and intended destination of the traveler. Using our 'point A to point B' phrasing, a passenger would book a ticket that takes them from point A to point C, with a stopover at point B. The passenger's actual destination is point B and leaves the airport at this layover, leaving their seat empty on the B-to-C portion of the journey."

In fact, Paxton recorded a separate video to address one commenter's accusation, "You got caught trying to scam the airline. Airlines have strict policies against this."

@things_recorded_by_liv Replying to @Peg #greenscreen ♬ original sound - Liv Paxton

In that video, she maintained, "No, I didn't," refuting the accusation she tried skip-lagging. She reveals that the reason she was driving back to Charlotte for the return flight was to see her grandmother in Charleston, en route to getting a flight in Charlotte.

The Daily Dot has reached out to Paxton via TikTok comment and to American Airlines via email.

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