Joan Rivers on Larry King: Air Travel A Nightmare, Airport Agent A “Moron”

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by Robert Quigley | 9:28 am, January 6th, 2010

» 3 comments

On last night’s Larry King Live, Joan Rivers was not pleased about her treatment at a Costa Rican airport. Thanks to a mixup at the ticket counter, she was held back by airport security while her family flew home to the US.

Rivers wasn’t afraid to show her indignation: she called the agent who detained her a “moron idiot” and speculated that the woman was “premenstrual.”

An aside: “Joan Rivers A Security Threat?” would make a pretty enticing Chyron of the Day.

Here’s what happened, in a nutshell: Joan Rivers is, in fact, a stage name: her real name is Joan Rosenberg, and her American passport says “Joan Rosenberg, AKA Joan Rivers.” But the airport gave her a boarding pass which read “Joseph Rosenberg,” which got her past several rounds of security, but which got her held up at the last minute by an agent who was also apparently confused by the “AKA” designation: (transcript via CNN)

JOAN RIVERS: A wonderful vacation. We were told to get to the airport with a lot of time, because it was already after there was trouble. We did. Bring all kinds of identification, which we did. I was taken through four different checkpoints, all of which I was glad to do, took off my shoes, took off everything.

Then, at the last minute, some moron idiot decided, as we’re literally going onto the plane, and ripping your ticket, they didn’t understand why my passport had two names on it. And I was denied access to the plane.

KING: Has this ever happened to you flying before? RIVERS: Never. I’ve been all over, Larry, India, China, Nepal, Korea, you name it, Russia, never.

KING: What was the gate agent’s point of view, then? Was it a he or a she?

RIVERS: It was a woman. And I think she was premenstrual. And she was just in a terrible — she just wasn’t going to understand that I was flying under two names with my passport that the United States government says also known as, AKA.

At the end of the segment, a caller asked if Rivers was ashamed of calling a woman who was trying to do her job a “moron:” in as many words, Rivers said ‘no:’

“I was given a boarding pass with the wrong name on it. I went through five different security passes. And then a woman at the gate, who will not look at my passport, who will not call Continental, who will not call for help, who will not recheck into their records, says to me, you cannot go on? No, she is a moron. And I stand on that.”

Airport Security, chyron of the day, Joan Rivers, Joan Rivers Airport, joan Rivers Airport Incident, Joan Rosenberg, Joseph Rosenberg, larry king, Larry King Live

pyrope

Joan Rivers calls someone a moron? Isn’t that a lot like the pot calling the kettle black?
CarmanK

And that’s the problem!! There are always those who do not believe the rules apply to them. They make the employees’ lives miserable and make fun of them for doing their job. But, then, if she happened to be a real danger, the employee would have been stupid for being too lax and not recognizing the danger she posed to airline passengers. We need unionized, well trained airport screening personnel, on the level of police officers with authority to act at the screens. We need to have decision makers, managers on hand to make the decisions that could have allowed Joan Rivers through, if her information checked out. We need technology that is accurate. Having a name is not enough, there needs to be more information. There also, needs to be cross reference technologies, so once a person is referred into the system THREE times, the system will auIomatically do a systemwide, across agencies, identity check and flag the name for further research.In this case, it was damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I give the airport employee points for doing her job, even if the person was a celeb.
http://www.uselessbeauty.com Vidiot

This whole story is weird. Why does Rivers have two names on her passport? I can understand having a stage name and not using one’s birth name for professional purposes…but why does the passport need to have anything other than her birth/legal/actual name on it? Seems like it’s just muddying the waters to include her stage name there.

If Rivers is telling the story accurately, it does seem odd that the gate agent wouldn’t check with the airline or otherwise escalate the situation so it could be resolved. It also seems like it’s incumbent on Rivers to verify that her boarding pass has the correct name on it. (It’s also odd that a boarding pass would be issued based on the ID that Rivers presents and not the name her reservation is under; as far as I know, the reservations systems usually query the Passenger Name Record on file and issue the boarding pass based on it. I’m not sure why a ticket agent would’ve changed the name in the system unless very confused by her passport…in which case the agent should have worked to straighten it out before issuing a boarding pass.)