A Tennessee woman flying to North Carolina on an American Airlines flight believes she and several other passengers fell victim to a scam while trying to board. Now she’s issuing a warning to other travelers.
TikTok user Tammy (@tammyjo99) told the story in a video posted earlier in the week. In the video, she explains how the incident happened as she was attempting to catch an early morning flight from Knoxville to Charlotte. “I got scammed by an American Airlines worker at the airport,” she claims.
Tammy says she arrived at the airport around 4am. She says it was crowded, so she waited in a long line to get to the American Airlines desk to check her bag.
How The Incident Unfolded
When she got to the counter, the American Airlines worker, according to Tammy, told her she couldn’t because it was too close to the boarding time. Tammy says she was told she should’ve checked her bag an hour ahead of flight time. “And so, quickly, he hands me a Post-it note,” she recalls. “And it has a phone number on there. … He says, ‘Call this number to rebook your flight.’”
Due to the urgency of the situation and the early morning hour, Tammy says she complied without thinking.
When she called the number, she says a man with an Indian accent confirmed he could rebook her flight. She notes he took her credit card information to complete the transaction. Thinking the situation is resolved, Tammy says she went back to her vehicle in the airport parking lot to wait for her new flight.
That’s when Tammy’s travel agent woke up and started questioning her about the revised itinerary, she says. The travel agent couldn’t find any record of a rebooked flight, Tammy explains. So Tammy says she called the number on the Post-it note again and let her travel agent talk to the man.
“They start talking. Things aren’t adding up,” Tammy says. “She adds an American Airlines agent to the line. So it’s like a four-way call with all of us. They get to fighting. The Indian man hangs up.”
Was This Whole Thing A Scam?
Eventually, Tammy says her travel agent and the American Airlines employee on the phone rebooked her on a Delta Airlines flight for later the same day. When she arrived at the gate to catch that flight, she says she ran into several other people from the original American Airlines flight that morning.
Tammy recalls speaking with an older man who told her, “We got scammed.” The man reportedly advised Tammy to cancel her credit card. She says he warned her the phone number had likely connected them to a third party unaffiliated with American Airlines.
“So this American Airlines worker who was working to check people’s bags was giving out these Post-it notes with a phone number,” Tammy says. “He was in on this whole charade. We all got scammed. We all had to cancel our credit, debit cards, whatever.”
She concludes, “You think an airport worker should be trusted. You’re not going to think twice about some of these things. And that’s my storytime.”
A Reddit user posted to r/AmericanAirlines with a similar story a month ago. The man wrote that he called a number for the airline he found through Google to confirm a reservation for his daughter. The person on the phone said it would cost $160 to rebook the flight, which the man said he paid. He later learned that he’d inadvertently called a scammer and had to dispute the transaction on his credit card.
What To Do If You Fall Victim To A Scam
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) encourages victims to take the following steps if they paid a scammer with a credit or debit card:
- Contact their bank.
- Inform them of the fraudulent charge.
- See if the bank can reverse the transaction.
- Ask if it can give them their money back.
@tammyjo99 Not my typical content but I had to share LOL #storytime
BroBible reached out to Tammy via TikTok comment and direct message for comment. BroBible also reached out to American Airlines via email for comment.