United passenger flying from Los Angeles to Nicaragua accidentally ends up 8,000 miles away in Tokyo

A United Airlines passenger who was headed from Los Angeles to Nicaragua accidentally ended up in Tokyo after boarding the wrong plane.

Picture the scene: you’re at the airport, set to board your flight to Managua, Nicaragua, which has a layover in Houston. 

But after boarding the plane, you see that the flight time, which should be three hours, is six – and it slowly dawns on you that you’re on the wrong flight. 

As outlandish as that sounds, it recently happened to United Airlines passenger Víctor Calderón, who ended up thousands of miles away from where he needed to be.

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The United Airlines passenger ended up spending two nights in Tokyo

Calderón was headed out to Nicaragua via Houston, Texas, back in August last year when the incident unfolded. 

Speaking to The Los Angeles Times, Calderón said he simply boarded his flight, slipped on his headphones and settled into what he thought was going to be a three and a half hour flight. 

However, he began to think something was amiss after he was offered a pillow and given a meal. 

After six hours in the sky, Calderón began to feel a little panicked about missing his connecting flight in Houston, and got the attention of a flight attendant who told him the plane was headed to Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan. 

United Airlines confirmed the incident to the New York Post. 

“We followed up with the airport to understand how this happened, reached out directly to the customer to apologize for his experience, and offered travel credits and reimbursement,” the spokesperson said.

Within ‘just hours’ of landing in Japan, Calderón was put on a return flight to Los Angeles and eventually landed at the correct destination 48 hours after his initial planned arrival time.

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The airline has urged passengers to check before they board

It’s unclear how the incident happened, but Calderón told The Los Angeles Times that when he boarded there were several gates close to each other. 

As he got onto the plane, he says he handed his ticket to an agent, who scanned. 

And the seat number he had been assigned on his printed boarding pass for the Houston flight also happened to be unoccupied on the Tokyo one. 

United Airlines issued a warning to travelers to check before boarding. 

“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,” they said. 

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