UNKNOWN DESTINATION

Passenger Lands in Wrong Country in Bizarre Flight Mishap

None of the airline staff noticed that the ticket said Berlin, not Bologna.

A passenger boarded the wrong plane in Denmark and ended up in Italy, despite holding a ticket for a flight to Germany. In a bizarre turn of events, 79-year-old Lena boarded the Ryanair flight to Bologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport that departed from the same gate as her easyJet flight to Berlin Brandenburg Airport, Swedish tabloid Expressen reported. Lena boarded the flight to Italy in error after going through security and reading screens which told easyJet passengers for Berlin to go to the gate. Once on board, Lena started to notice signs that she was on the wrong flight—primarily that the plane was branded Ryanair, not easyJet—but assumed it was a code-share flight between the two budget airlines, or that she’d been rebooked without her knowledge. What made Lena stay on the flight was that by chance, her booked seat was free. She realized her mistake only when she disembarked in Bologna after an unusually long flight for the trip from Copenhagen to Berlin. Once she realized the mistake, Lena sought help from staff, who eventually sent her by taxi to Venice, where she spent a night in a hotel before flying to Berlin. None of the staff at the gate noticed the discrepancy when Lena presented her boarding pass and passport. Lena and her son, whom she was going to see in Germany, have criticized Ryanair for letting her board without the correct ticket.