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.