'AITA for not reimbursing my friend's vacation after TSA didn't let her board a plane'

"My friend was not allowed to board the flight, the rest of us still went on the vacation, now she wants us to pay her back. AITAH if I don't pay her?"

Odd-Recording-3026 writes:

My three friends and I planned a vacation to Hawaii. We booked the flight, hotel, and car together for a discount and then split the costs four ways, so we each paid roughly $800 (we also booked a couple of activities there, totaling around $250).

On the day of the flight, we all arrived at the airport and started going through TSA. One of my friends, I'll call her Sarah, got stopped because she had a some things that she can't bring on a plane in her bag. She said she just forgot it was in there and didn't intentionally bring it, but it doesn’t really matter either way.

TSA ended up calling airport PD, and Sarah was not allowed to board the flight. She wasn’t arrested, but she was given a ticket and a court date and was not allowed through security.

Obviously, the rest of us still got on the plane because we were looking forward to our vacation. Now we're back, and Sarah is mad at all of us for going and wants us to pay her back for her portion of the expenses since she couldn’t go. But I don’t think we should have to! It’s not our fault she wasn’t allowed to fly, and I didn’t budget for paying her half as well.

She’s also mad because the airport is an hour from our home city, and we didn’t give her the keys to the car, so she had to pay for an Uber home. (We didn’t say she couldn’t have the keys; it’s just that no one thought to give her the keys to Matt’s car when everything was happening.)

One of my friends says we should just pay her to keep the peace, but I don’t think we should have to. Matt also thinks we shouldn’t have to pay her. If we split her costs, it would be about $350 each.

I could technically afford it, but I’m working on paying off my credit card, and that’s about the same amount I put toward the credit card each month, so it would put me a month behind on my plan to pay off my last credit card (I was a little irresponsible in my early twenties). Am I the AH if I refuse to pay her back? And even if I’m not the AH, should I just do it anyway to keep the peace?

OP added some context in the comments:

beansblog23 says:

Why didn’t she get on a later flight once everything was cleared up?

OP responded:

I don't travel often so I don't know how it works, but I assume she would have had to pay for another flight and wouldn't have wanted to do that. She was also pretty pissed off at that point, we all received some more angry texts when our plane landed, so that could've contributed to her not even trying.

I will say I don't think she's actually mad at us, I think she's mad at herself and taking it out on us. Which is not great, but it is out of character for her. I think the whole thing is just really frustrating for her so were giving her grace there.

SoMoistlyMoist says:

Look at it this way, if she were traveling by herself and paid for her own stuff in full and this same thing happened because she's an idiot, you wouldn't be expected to reimburse her for that right?

Solstice38 says:

This is 100% her fault. None of you did anything wrong, and there is no reason at all to reimburse her for her costs.

What do you think?