Traveler Mistakenly Boards the Wrong Flight and Ends Up at City 8,000 Miles Away from Planned Destination
“We followed up with our airport team to understand how this happened," said United Airlines
Kimberlee Speakman
Wed, February 11, 2026 at 2:51 PM UTC
3 min read
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A United Airlines passenger mistakenly boarded the wrong flight from Los Angeles, ending up over 8,000 miles away from their planned destination of Managua, Nicaragua
United Airlines said that it "reached out directly to the customer to apologize for his experience and offered travel credits and reimbursement"
The airlines also advised customers to "monitor the signs at the gate and boarding announcements" to make sure they were boarding the right plane
A United Airlines passenger ended up in a surprising destination after boarding the wrong plane.
A United Airlines spokesperson confirmed to PEOPLE that one of its passengers mistakenly boarded a flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo instead of their scheduled flight to Managua, Nicaragua, with a layover in Houston.
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The airline noted that the incident occurred in August 2025, and, after investigating how it happened, reached out to the passenger to “apologize.”
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“We followed up with our airport team to understand how this happened, reached out directly to the customer to apologize for his experience, and offered travel credits and reimbursement,” a United Airlines spokesperson said in a statement.The passenger reportedly realized that they were heading to the wrong destination when they had been on board for six hours, according to Fox News. A flight to Houston would have taken a little over three hours from Los Angeles.
The traveler eventually landed at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan, about 8,000 miles away from their original destination of Nicaragua. The passenger ended up staying at a hotel for two nights while United Airlines figured out their new travel itinerary, according to the outlet.
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"We always advise customers to monitor the signs at the gate and boarding announcements to make sure the aircraft they board is going to their intended destination,” United Airlines said in a statement.
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Several passengers weighed in on the boarding error on Reddit after someone posted a link to an article describing what happened. One person questioned if the airline workers scanned the passenger’s boarding pass at the gate, adding, “I’d expect the scanner would give some kind of warning if his name was not on the passenger list.”
Another person claimed that “gate agents will sometimes clear the warning without looking,” adding that there could have been "human error" involved on the part of the United Airlines workers.
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One person noted that they had seen something similar happen on a JetBlue flight out of New York City when a person who was supposed to fly to Santiago, Chile, ended up on a flight to Santiago, Dominican Republic.
Another person said, “I used to work for an airline, and it was not uncommon for passengers to do this."
Read the original article on People