An El Al airplane in flight. An El Al airplane in flight. Photo
by Archive Text size this story is by   The incident, which
occurred two weeks ago, exposed several errors: Neither ground
crew checking in passengers nor ground crew at the gate noticed
that the man's ticket and boarding pass were not for the New
York flight. The routine comparison between the number of
passengers present and the number of tickets collected on the
Los Angeles and the New York flights before take-off also did
not alert them to the error.  Since the passenger did not board
the Los Angeles-bound flight, his luggage was removed from that
plane as security regulations require, but El Al did not realize
he had boarded another flight instead.  Flights are frequently
delayed when passengers are late or do not show up for their
flight, and their luggage must be taken off the plane.  El Al
said: "A preliminary investigation reveals that due to the
strike at the airport that day, there was a gate change a short
time before take-off, which