A 101-year-old woman keeps getting mistaken for a baby on flights, and says it's because American Airlines' booking system can't handle her age

"The computer at the airport thought my birth date was 2022 and not 1922," Patricia told a BBC reporter on the same flight.

• An elderly woman named Patricia says American Airlines keeps getting her age wrong.
• The computer can't process that Patricia was born in 1922, not 2022.
• Airlines have increasingly adopted computerization across systems, but glitches often affect the most vulnerable passengers.

American Airlines cabin crew were expecting to look after a baby on board a flight from Chicago to Marquette, Michigan, this weekend.

But sitting in the seat designated for the infant, they instead found a 101-year-old woman, according to a BBC reporter who was also on the flight.

The centenarian, Patricia, had booked the seat for an adult but laughed off the incident with the confused cabin crew.

Patricia told the BBC: "It was funny that they thought I was only a little child and I'm an old lady!"

But she said it was not the first time American Airlines had mistaken her for a baby.

Patricia, who flies every year to visit family, said that the airline's booking system cannot seem to process the fact that she was born in 1922 rather than 2022.

"My daughter made the reservation online for the ticket, and the computer at the airport thought my birth date was 2022 and not 1922," she told the BBC.

During a previous trip, the glitch meant that airport staff met her after a flight without a pre-arranged wheelchair, thinking that they would just transport a baby through the terminal.

"The same thing happened last year and they were also expecting a child and not me," said Patricia.

She had to wait on the plane until all other passengers had disembarked while they brought her a wheelchair.

"I would like them to fix the computer as my poor daughter had to carry all our luggage and apparel almost a mile from one gate to the other," she told the BBC.

American Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Airlines are increasingly adopting automation across their systems to make operations more efficient.

And passengers mostly embrace the convenience that technology brings to their travel experiences. In the latest annual American Customer Satisfaction Index, app services, ease of making reservations, and airlines' websites were the factors that customers were most satisfied with when traveling with US airlines.

But while technology generally makes operations smoother and more efficient, glitches routinely pop up, often affecting more vulnerable passengers with special requirements.

Errors with technology have also caused serious disruption to global travel.

For example, a glitch in the UK's national automatic flight-planning system last August left air traffic control staff processing flights by hand. The issue led to more than 1,500 flight cancellations across Europe.

In 2022, 12,000 American Airlines flights were left without pilots after a glitch allowed them to drop assignments. The airline had to offer pilots triple pay to cover the fallout.