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(fake) flight information from British airways

I tried calling the airlines, and I tried tracking apps.

How can I tell if this flight itinerary is fake?

I spoke to the person before they boarded their flight.

The flight is with British Airways, flight BA0081A and BA0097 on August 8th and August 9th. From Accra Ghana, Kotoka International Airport, to Heathrow then to Tampa International Airport in Florida. The ticket could be a scam, a fake ticket.

rennee walker
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Michael Huff
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4 Answers4

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By searching on BA's website I can't see any flight that leaves at that time, the only scheduled flight from Accra to LHR is after 10pm each night. I also searched several other sites getting the same result, no flight matches those flight times.

The flight code itself leads to a LHR - Accra flight, so it's backwards which is also suspicious.

As pointed out by Weather Vane in the comments, the times are also interesting because they either don't match up, or are not shown in the local times which is very unusual.

As for the London to Florida flight, again, the timings are not shown in any local times, and this flight also doesn't exist on BA's site. The flight code doesn't match anything BA provides. The only flights I can see for tomorrow either go from Gatwick, or have a layover at another airport on the way.

All this put together is pointing towards it being fake, I'm sorry.

Uciebila
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    And I suspect the next communication will be along the lines of "Help - I need £500 for immigration fines or I can't enter the country" scam email. – Laconic Droid Aug 08 '19 at 11:42
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    @Michael Huff Supposing the passenger to be Ghanaian, they’d also need a transit visa for the UK and of course a US visa. Pretty difficult to get, so sadly possibly also another indication of the flight itinerary being fake. – Traveller Aug 08 '19 at 11:49
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    Thanks to everyone how help answer my ?? It was greatly appreciated but I doubt I'll be getting any more phone calls from them I just sent him a nice few text messages get stranded you're on your own thanks again people y'all have a great day – Michael Huff Aug 08 '19 at 11:49
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    @MichaelHuff but they won't be stranded; they won't have flown at all. They've just taken your money and mocked up an itinerary. –  Aug 09 '19 at 07:47
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This is a fake. One can identify this as follows:

  • Note the different in color and size of some of the text, especially in the first flight departure time, the initial 0 is not the same size and color as the 8:00.

  • IMHO at least the following have been doctored:

    • first flight number, departure date and time and arrival date,
    • second flight month
    • passenger name.

  • BA Flight 81 is LHR-ACC, not ACC-LHR.

  • No ACC-LHR flight at that time.

  • Using the name and PNR, the BA site does not recognise it.

  • No BA Flight 97.

  • BA flights LHR-MIA with a different flight number and different times and different aircraft.

So either the original confirmation is very old, or it was already a fake originally!

guest
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jcaron
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    Additionally, even though some airline systems do represent passenger names in the NAME/NAME format, that format is always LAST/FIRST -- which is wrong here, unless the passenger's surname is Sarah... – hmakholm left over Monica Aug 08 '19 at 13:58
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    Another point: according to https://www.planespotters.net/airline/British-Airways, BA does not have, and never has had, any A340 aircraft in its fleet. – Nate Eldredge Aug 08 '19 at 14:03
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    Many or all of these tells are probably deliberate. If would be easy for a scammer to produce a much more convincing fake -- heck, genuine BA confirmations these days are simply "you can print out this HTML email if you want", which are trivial to change details in without any risk of font mismatches. By deliberately making the document look suspect, the scammer avoids wasting time on marks who are too cautious to pay up in the end. – hmakholm left over Monica Aug 08 '19 at 14:03
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    What jumped out for me is the flight timings. LHR-MIA flights are (per Google Flights) 9:20 or 9:45 in length, and LHR-TPA flights if they existed would be similar; and a westbound flight on that route would almost surely be a day flight. Similarly. actual ACC-LHR flights are 6:40. – Michael Lugo Aug 08 '19 at 15:21
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    More on the typography: 1) on the second line, the word "details" is slightly lower than the rest of the sentence, 2) "Please find below your details" isn't very fluent English, 3) the column alignment is poor, 4) no BA logo, and 5) comparing with a google image search of flight information notices, it looks quite different and amateurish. – Weather Vane Aug 08 '19 at 18:56
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    There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying it's very obviously a fake because it is. Put that (back?) in the answer with good conscience. If somebody doesn't realize that key parts (like dates and names) of the text were very visibly replaced with different information, then it's high time they learned to pay attention and there is no need to soften the blow. – Gábor Aug 08 '19 at 23:06
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    There's also no Airbus A340 in BA's fleet... – gparyani Aug 09 '19 at 00:28
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    Any further discussion of the "friendliness" of including or not including the descriptor "(very) obvious" should probably be directed to meta. – V2Blast Aug 09 '19 at 04:55
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    @HenningMakholm After 2 years of contact? I'd say they'd be done filtering by that time. – Mast Aug 09 '19 at 10:15
  • The year is also missing from the dates. – jhadenfeldt Aug 09 '19 at 20:50
  • The name for Heathrow Airport changes between the two flights, which are presumably supposed to be from the same booking. Also, the layout changes. – Chieron Aug 09 '19 at 20:58
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    @Mast It's a common theme to make these kind of documents and general communication intentionally obviously fraudulent to reduce false positive rates. Here's a paper on the whole thing. There's a never ending stream of potential targets, everything you can do to focus on the most gullible people increases your ROI. The math is rather fascinating when looking at it from that point of view. – Voo Aug 09 '19 at 21:25
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    @Gabor There's always someone who knows less about a subject than you do. "There's a sucker born every minute" is literally an understatement; but we're all suckers until & unless we learn from each other. – jpaugh Aug 11 '19 at 07:26
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    @jpaugh - I stand by my comment. Knowing whether the flight length is realistic, knowing whether BA flies that type of airplane and similar arguments fall into your category all right, there are some in the know and others who are not. But to see that exactly the names and dates were very visibly altered doesn't require any knowledge and is something I'd expect my 8-year-old to spot any time. This warrants the "obvious" adjective. I didn't suggest the answer called the OP a stupid monkey that doesn't know any better :-), I just said the "obvious" was very much warranted. – Gábor Aug 11 '19 at 08:02
  • @Gabor There's nothing factually wrong with what you said. But I don't think it's an effective stance to convince someone who is unaware of those facts already. Incidentally, those artifacts would (in the general case) say more about the size and budget of the organization which created them rather than the legitimacy; smaller government organizations frequently have forms with weird font glitches, for example. – jpaugh Aug 11 '19 at 08:11
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One more way: go to the airline’s website, put in the surname and the six-character confirmation code. You will immediately get either the full true itinerary or the message that there is no such booking.

Note that it’s still (probably) a scam even if not fake. Trivial to book a flight, copy the confirmation, and then cancel.

WGroleau
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    This would certainly work for BA, but some airlines don't allow managing agent-issued tickets from the web site. Nepal Airlines, for example, says the booking is not found if you try to check a flight booked through a travel agent (online or otherwise) – AKS Aug 10 '19 at 18:53
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    I didn't know that. It would work for every airline I've used. – WGroleau Aug 10 '19 at 21:38
  • I assume a cancelled flight would show as such when you tried to look it up. Still, it makes faking it much easier, since you can forward legitimate emails from the transaction and/or take screen shots. – jpaugh Aug 11 '19 at 07:16
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Wow this is an obvious fake. The only thing not obvious to me is what reservation they could've used to doctor because this absolutely is not just editing the passenger ... others already pointed out some problems but there are so many more. Here's a few.

It starts with "BA Booking reference" followed by "TG Booking reference". TG is Thai Airways which has nothing to do with a British Airways Ghana-UK-USA flight given that it does not fly to Ghana or the USA at all and also it is not in an alliance with BA.

Further, there is no such thing as a LHR-TPA flight. Plain and simple, no airlines fly directly between those two. You could search BA, Kayak, Google, check ExpertFlyer, whatever you prefer, but it doesn't exist. Also the flight time is not right, from London to east coast USA it takes eight hours more or less, there is nothing in the USA that'd be 12:20, even LAX is only 11:15.

Further, British Airways does not operate the Airbus 340. Right now, they contracted Air Belgium to fly one from London to Toronto for them but otherwise, it's not in their fleet, plain and simple. https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/about-ba/fleet-facts Their choice of four engine jet is the 747-400 which they also happen to fly on the ACC-LHR route which takes 6:40 and not 8:20. If we presumed this itinerary was starting from Ghana, well, 8:20 is almost exactly Dubai which is 8:00 but the problem then becomes to find a 12:20 flight from Dubai preferably to the east or so and that doesn't exist, Perth is <11hrs, Melbourne >13. I really can't figure out what they doctored for this...