Airline Flies Elderly Man 1,000 Miles Away From Destination, To Another Country

An elderly man ended up more than 1,000 miles away from his intended destination after Ryanair crew failed to notice he boarded the wrong flight. Pawel Lawreniuk, 75, who was scheduled to fly back to his hometown of Gdansk in Poland from Bradford in England, mistakenly landed in Malta.

The Ryanair plane took Lawreniuk to Malta on Jan. 6, the daily newspaper for Bradford, Telegraph & Argus, reported Monday, adding that the man's ticket showed the flight he was expecting to catch was to Gdansk.

Lawreniuk's daughter, Lucyna, said she dropped her father off at the airport with plenty of time in hand.

"I double checked the ticket, printed it and it said Gdansk. There was a call to me, at work and I saw it was from Malta. I thought oh s---, there's something wrong. I then saw someone writing on WhatsApp and saw the message," Lucyna said. "I cried, I was scared - he was in a different country a different place."

Lucyna added that her father told her that when he boarded the plane, he showed his ticket to the crew but no one pointed out that he was on the wrong flight.

With the help of a Polish-speaking woman at the airport in Malta, Lawreniuk was able to return home safely. However, his daughter said she was angry about the mix-up.

"We are aware that a passenger was able to board an incorrect flight at Leeds Bradford Airport on Sunday 6 January," a representative for Swissport, the handling agency for Ryanair at the airport, said.

"The passenger had undergone all airport security screening before boarding the flight and had a valid passport which had been checked... We are investigating how this occurred and we are re-briefing all staff on the procedure. We would like to apologize to Mr. Lawreniuk for the inconvenience caused."

Lucyna also told local media her father was upset about the entire incident and told her he would not want to visit her next year.

"My father told me he doesn't want to come to me next year. He doesn't want to fly anymore. Today I spoke with him about everything and he's had bad dreams - I'm worried about him, but hopefully everything will be ok," she said.

She added: "If someone didn't come forward, I'm not sure what would have happened - he had no money, no phone, he can't really do anything alone."

In another incident of an airline mix-up that took place in 2018, an elderly woman was booked to travel from El Salvador to North Carolina - but boarded the wrong plane during a stopover in Houston and ended up in Denver, Colorado. Eighty-year-old Maria Larios, who could not speak English and is partially blind, was traveling to stay with her daughter who was about to undergo brain surgery.

The United Airlines staff did not notice the woman had boarded the wrong flight. The airline later apologized for the incident.