A United Airlines passenger headed from Los Angeles to Nicaragua suddenly found himself landing in Tokyo instead—after no one noticed he had boarded the wrong flight. Here’s how it happened, and why it’s not as rare as you’d think.
Víctor Calderón was headed from Los Angeles to Managua, Nicaragua on United, with a connection in Houston. When he was in the air on his flight from Los Angeles he realized something was wrong, and asked a flight attendant why the 3 hour 15 minute flight to Houston was taking six hours?
That’s when she broke the news to him that they were headed to Tokyo. He was stuck on the plane, landed at Haneda airport, and then had to wait for United to arrange a return to Los Angeles. And he started fresh on his journey to Central America – arriving 48 hours later than planned.
United initially offered $300 travel credit as an apology against his $655 ticket. He was stuck in hotels for two nights and had to buy clothes, and offered up receipts totaling $1,095. His contention is that was United’s fault. He went to Spanish-language media for help and United offered $1,000 in travel credits.
It’s hard to imagine how this happens, but it’s possible that a boarding pass didn’t get scanned at the gate or than an error was overriden. Agents override messages all the time, or boarding is done manually seat by seat. Agents get distracted.
At some airports you scan your boarding pass and enter a corridor that can exit onto two different jetbridges. That doesn’t seem to be what’s happening here.
It’s even possible for a passenger to be handed the wrong boarding pass, and board that flight not noticing it’s to a different destination.
Generally, reactions break down along three lines:
- This is the passenger’s fault. Notice where you are, the gate monitors, the announcement, whether you’re on a widebody aircraft, and whether some announcements are being made in Japanese?
- United is responsible for ensuring only the right people are on the aircraft. They have a manifest and seat assignments. They’re only supposed to allow ticketed passengers on board. This is a breakdown in security protocol.
- Come on, he got a free trip to Tokyo! United ought to credit him the miles for the transpacific flight but of course sadly mileage accural is now fixed to the cost of a ticket rather than distance flown. Either way, it’s a chance for a quick visit, and great sushi.
This used to seem to happen on United a lot, like when they flew an 80-year old blind woman to Denver instead of Raleigh or flew a French woman to San Francisco even though she had a boarding pass for Paris.
We’ve certainly seen passengers fly to the wrong Sydney by mistake (flying to Nova Scotia, Canada instead of Australia). You’d think it would be a giveaway when they were boarding a prop plane! But their boarding pass at least does say Sydney! Thirty four out of fifty passengers on a regional jet even once flew to the wrong city, too.
Though I guess it was worse when Spirit Airlines sent a 6-year old unaccompanied minor to the wrong city. And then Frontier did it, too.
Is this ultimately on United or on the passenger?
I’m in the United is responsible group. Somewhere they screwed up.
Look up Erwin Kreuz, who was going from Germany to San Francisco and wound up in Bangor, Maine, for four days before anyone figured out that he was on the wrong side of the U.S. That happened in 1977 so might not be so easy today. Wikipedia has a nice article about it.
I’m sorry. You need to realize what flight you are boarding.
Even if you don’t know English very well. If you see Haneda Tokyo. Perhaps ask a question. I travel in international carriers and I certainly know where I am going.
I’d say 75 percent fault of passenger and 25 percent United. Cuz they should have known they boarded the wrong passenger.
Too many people blame everyone else for thier problems of not being an adult here.
No sympathy. And he got a free trip to Tokyo too.
Agree w Isaac. Come on, Bobo. Given the guy was non English speaking heading to Nicaragua, possibly not a savvy flier but yeah there had to be a significant number of context clues someone with a little situational awareness would pick up on. Probably doesn’t really value a free trip to Tokyo. That being said United should have a thorough enough protocol to make up for the cluelessness shown here and say dude this isn’t your flight.
This is airline’s fault. They are supposed to know who is on their aircraft. Manually blindly overriding a boarding pass error should not be permitted. It also raises security concerns. As a secondary issue, did the passenger have a visa to enter Japan?
Didn’t he wonder why probably at least half the plan were Japanese? I can’t imagine a plane going to Nicaragua would be more than 50% Japanese/Asian.
@George – recently flew LAX-TYO with United and surprisingly 90%+ of the passengers weren’t Asian descent. Not that this makes it United’s fault.
His boarding passes are shown in the news video.
Happened in August of 2025.
Gate 75A LAX-IAH 11:55am departure, around the same time as LAX-HND. Seat 34D.
LAX-HND usually goes out of 77 but it’s in the same rotunda-like area or maybe LAX-HND had an adjacent gate that day.
Other interesting one…he was in Biz for his MGA-IAH return then IAH-LAX had ‘added to upgrade standby’ list on it.
Who needs to buy $1100 of items for two days away from your luggage?
Oh and I see in a later part of the video they zoom on his HND-LAX boarding pass. They put him in Polaris. Very nice gesture by UA but guessing $1,000 of actual cash is more useful to him.
There’s fault on both sides. Most gates state the destination and flight numbers, right? “Tokyo” versus “Managua”. Flight number? Me thinks that even in Spanish, the passenger should have been able to distinguish the destination name difference and the numbers in English and Spanish are the same. So…?? Now, for United’s part…what’s with missing the PNR on the boarding pass not matching with the flight data base? You might think that the barcode scan would have sent a red flag. OK United “missed” the red flag. What about the seat assignment? I find it hard to believe that the passengers boarding pass seat didn’t already have someone sitting there OR the correct passenger showed up. Too many holes in the Swiss cheese lining up with no big question mark flying up!
I was at DFW earlier this year and the flights to Durango, CO and Durango, Mexico were boarding at gates right next to each other at similar times, and I just had to laugh because that seemed like a mix-up just waiting to happen if I’ve ever seen one before.
A flight could have changed gates and an inexperienced traveler didn’t notice. While you’d like to think a.passenger would observe things, it’s really the airline’s systems that should never allow this. If it is possible to buy a ticket for Nicaragua and get a flight to Japan, I know what I’ll do next time I want to go to Tokyo.