A passenger flying on the infamous low-cost carrier Ryanair has not only ended up at the wrong airport but on the wrong side of the country with the Mediterranean Sea in between.
The passenger was intending to fly from Pisa to Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, but ended up on the plane to Bari instead, as reported by CNN.
What happened?
The Italian man, who has not been identified at this time, passed through final checks in Pisa and walked towards his plane.
Unfortunately, it seems that there were two Ryanair planes being boarded at the same time. The aircraft did not board from a jetbridge, but rather via a walk from the terminal to a staircase. At some stage in the process, the passenger got confused which aircraft was flying to his destination.
While you might think that his mistake would have been corrected at the point of boarding, it seems that the flight attendants did not check his ticket. As such, he was allowed to take a seat, unaware that the plane was heading to the wrong destination.
The passenger started to realize something wasn't right when the aircraft began to descend into Bari.
A fellow passenger filmed this realization, and translated it to CNN.
"He said the landscape was different from Cagliari. Then he started insulting the flight assistants arguing they let him pass through the gates,"
Upon landing, the passenger launched into a tirade against the flight attendants and demanded that they take care of him. He said that he paid almost 400 EUR on the flight and was now out of funds to meet his sick friend back in Sardinia.
It remains to be seen how Ryanair will rectify this situation.
How did this happen?
Looking at the story, we can see that the issue was caused by the passenger getting on the wrong plane. Whilst rare, it has happened before across the world and is one of the main reasons why we have assigned seating and flight attendants who check tickets when boarding.
It seems that in this case, neither occurred.