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.
I call BS on the passenger.
a) Your boarding pass says Managua not Haneda.
b) You’re at the gate and you see Tokyo Haneda (HND) and you still proceed to board the plane.
Or this guy is blind, illiterate, or just cannot understand TO-KY-O?
Yes it’s also United’s fault for boarding him and him even finding a seat that is not already someone else’s. But for United to actually compensate him, that’s really pushing it.
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.
Taxiing out at ORD to SAN when the F/A called the cockpit saying we needed to return to the gate as we had an SAT pax who miss boarded. I told here we weren’t going to inconvenience 165 pax for one miss board. He continued to complain loudly enroute, I went back (that’s when a Capt could do so) he pointed to his boarding pass that said San Antonio in small letters blaming the airline. I told him he walked under a large sign that said “San Diego” to board the aircraft and he was getting a free tour of the country and upon reaching SAN we would put him in first class back to SAT. He accepted his fate and was mollified with his extended journey.
For a USA citizen, a temporary visitor stamp is given on arrival in Japan for such cases. I had this happen many years ago. If I remember correctly I could have stayed for three months.
Does this mean I can book a ticket to a Denver and just walk into a United Flight to Tokyo for a free trip?
drrichard. … That was a great Wikipedia article about Erwin Kreuz. Thanks for the recommendation, Jay
United should’ve caught this, but I don’t have any sympathy for the guy. There would’ve been multiple clues along the way that something wasn’t right, enough for any semi-aware person to notice.
Flight attendants in the US should be doing a second check of boarding passes, at the aircraft door (like is done in almost every other country. Unfortunately, the “it’s not my job” culture in America (like it’s also not their job to clean/tidy lavatories).
Why have a boarding process if the boarding pass doesn’t scan? (Let the gate agents work on processing elite upgrades instead!) This is on the airline.
Early in my career I had a business meeting in Boston and had to fly there via one of the then no-ticket, walk-up, pay on board shuttles (probably Eastern or Pan Am!) My managing director was supposed to meet us there, but arrived several hours late. He blamed it on Long Island Expressway traffic. In fact, he had inadvertently walked on to the DCA-bound shuttle. That was somewhat defensible as there were not boarding passes to scan.
@Tim — Is your fetish to punch-down on workers?
Do tell them how you feel directly. Like, before your next flight; let them know, preferably before beverage or meal service. Why not tell your waiter, or better yet, your nurse, too, so they can insert your catheter extra “carefully.”
Or, you can actually put in the effort to become a crew member, get selected by an airline, train, and be the change you want to see in the world.
Maybe then you will realize that these professionals are not paid enough, and also are not supported enough by management to be doing the extra things you think they should be doing.
Naw, they’re all just… lazy. Got it. /s
Back in Dec 2025, I read about:
Two American tourists, Brittney Dzialo and a friend, went viral in September 2025 after accidentally booking a flight to Tunis, Tunisia, instead of “To Nice,” France, while in Rome. Due to a mix-up at the counter and inattention to boarding passes, they realized mid-flight they were flying to North Africa, not the French Riviera.
I have sat at the gate that my printed boarding pass told me to be at on a extended layover, when they started boarding at the gate, i got in line to board, only to find out it that this was no longer the correct gate airline. When you are fatigued, tired, distracted, it can happen to those of us who travel a lot.
@George Romey: Your assumption is ridiculous. First, if you ever fly LAX-NRT/HND, you would notice that not even 10% are Japanese flyers. Japanese are loyal to NH/JL. In addition, Japanese flyers want to be pampered. They would fly with NH/JL to be treated like kings/queens, the thing obviously not happening on United flight. Most passengers on UA flights to Japan only to continue with connections and American passengers.