Denied boarding due to airline system error

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share what happened to my family, partly to vent and partly to see if anyone has experienced something similar.

Me (39F) and my husband (39M) were traveling long-haul at the end of December with Iberia with our two young children (2 and 4 years old). We arrived at the airport early (around two and a half hours before departure) and were already in line when check-in opened.

At the counter, we were told we couldn’t check our bags because one our child’s boarding pass showed only an initial instead of the full first name. All our tickets had only the initials, but this seemed to be an issue only with our infant son's ticket. Important detail: all passenger names were entered correctly during booking and online check-in. The staff themselves told us this was due to a limitation/error in the airline’s system and that we needed to call customer service to fix it.

What followed was nearly two hours of frustrating back-and-forth with customer service, which turned out to be slow, inconsistent, and often incorrect. Each time we called, we seemed to get different information, and no one had a clear understanding of how to fix the issue.

At one point, they decided the solution was to remove our child from the booking and reissue a ticket. However, during this process, they accidentally removed me from the reservation as well, making the situation even worse.

They then attempted to fix it by sending me a new ticket, but it turned out to be the exact same ticket that had already been deleted from the system, meaning it was completely unusable. We had to call again and explain the issue from scratch, while time kept passing and we were still stuck at the airport.

By this point, the situation had become overwhelming. I was in tears, realizing we were very likely going to miss the flight despite having done everything we were told. While still at the counter, I could hear staff discussing with colleagues that the flight was about to close, which made it clear we were running out of time.

Eventually, they allowed us to check in our bags, and we were told to hurry. We started moving as fast as possible with two small children, under a lot of stress.

One airline employee then escorted us through security to try to speed things up. It felt like a last attempt to fix the situation and get us on board.

However, when we finally reached the gate, the aircraft door was closed right in front of us. Despite being fully aware of the situation and how long we had been trying to resolve an issue caused by their own system, we were told they could not wait any longer.

And just like that, we were left there, after nearly two hours of trying to fix their mistake, following every instruction, and being rushed through the airport, only to be denied boarding at the very end.

At that point, no one approached us to offer any kind of help or guidance. We were simply left there, with two young children, trying to understand what had just happened and what we were supposed to do next.

There was no assistance from Iberia, no rebooking support, no accountability, we were completely on our own to fix the situation.

In the end, we had to rebook tickets for the following day at our own expense, as there were no available alternatives offered to us. To make matters worse, Iberia later claimed that the situation was entirely our fault, arguing that we should have checked the name on the boarding pass more carefully, despite the fact that the issue originated from their own system and was acknowledged as such by their staff.

I’ve replayed the entire situation in my mind many times, thinking about how it could have been prevented. After the incident, I called customer service for an unrelated issue, and they told me that using just the initial is the standard procedure when last names are too long. The representative seemed genuinely surprised that we weren’t allowed to board over something like this. Even if, at the time, I had suspected that the boarding pass might not work with just the initial and called customer service, this employee would have reassured me that it was correct and that there would be no issues boarding.

Has anyone ever experienced something like this?