A 79-year-old passenger realised she had mistakenly flown to the wrong country when she saw a sign saying “Welcome to Bologna” out of the plane window while trying to reach Berlin.
Lena had booked a flight to the German capital from Copenhagen, Denmark, where she was to meet her son Paul-Johan at the airport on 22 May.
The passenger told the Swedish newspaper Expressen that she arrived at the airport in good time and checked in her luggage before the information board told her to go to the gate for her flight.
When she reached the gate, she saw other passengers boarding a plane, so she hurried and was the last to get on the flight.
Yet once she was onboard, she saw Ryanair’s branding everywhere. She was supposed to be travelling with easyJet to Berlin, but since she was let in at the gate, Lena thought it could be a collaboration between the two airlines, or that she had been rebooked without her knowledge.
Her seat was also vacant, so she sat down for the flight. In the air, however, things got even stranger when it felt that the flight felt a lot longer than usual.
The flight from Copenhagen to Berlin usually takes an hour, but Lena felt something was wrong when the plane had been in the air for over an hour and a half.
Initially, she put this down to the flight being delayed. But when the Ryanair plane came into land, it suddenly dawned on her that there had been a mix-up when she saw the words “Welcome to Bologna” plastered on the airport sign.
“I didn’t think it was true,” Lena recalled.
It turned out the confusion was partly caused by Lena’s intended easyJet flight departing from the same gate as the Ryanair flight to Italy, which was leaving just before easyJet’s plane.
However, it remains unclear how Lena was let onto the Ryanair plane, as she claimed she showed her boarding pass and ticket to the third-party provider which manages boarding at Copenhagen Airport.
In a statement, Ryanair told The Independent: “It is each passenger’s responsibility to ensure they board the correct aircraft, and there are several touchpoints throughout the passenger journey which inform passengers of the aircraft’s destination, including screens at the boarding gate and PA announcements on board.
“This passenger was due to travel on an easyJet flight from Copenhagen to Berlin on 22 May, which was due to board from gate F8 after our flight from Copenhagen to Bologna, which this passenger wrongly boarded instead, despite screens at the gate clearly displaying the flight number and destination (Bologna, not Berlin).”
While in Bologna, Lena said it was hard to try and make staff aware of her situation, claiming a woman who worked at Ryanair accused her of having made a mistake herself.
“It felt both unfair and condescending. I am 79 years old, travelling alone, and it was a very vulnerable situation to end up in,” she told Expressen.
Meanwhile, her son was waiting in Berlin for his mother, who never showed up. She eventually contacted him and said she was over 500 miles away.
Lena was later reunited with her son after a taxi was arranged to take her to Venice, where she was given accommodation for the night and put on another flight to her intended destination.
Ryanair added: “Once made aware, we quickly arranged overnight accommodation and for this passenger to be reaccommodated on the next available flight to Berlin (via Venice).”
The Independent has contacted Copenhagen Airport for comment.
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