United Airlines Flies Woman 3,000 Miles In Wrong Direction

The last thing United Airlines needed was another public incident, but that’s precisely what happened when the airline failed to notify a passenger of a gate change and sent her on a 3,000-mile flight in the wrong direction.

Lucie Bahetoukilae, who speaks only French and no English, was leaving Newark Airport in New Jersey on a flight bound for Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Her boarding pass had the correct names of both airports when she went to the gate and was let aboard the plane.

“When she went to sit someone was sitting there already,” her niece, Diane Miantsoko, who translated the incident to reporters, told WABC.

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Bahetoukilae again showed her boarding pass to a flight attendant, who promptly seated her elsewhere.

The flight she was on, however, made a last minute gate change and never notified Bahetoukilae. Instead of going to Paris, Bahetoukilae ended up in San Francisco, where she was stuck at the airport for 11 hours. When she was finally able to get a flight home, she had already been traveling for 28 hours.

“If they would have made the announcement in French, she would have moved gates,” her niece said.

United admitted it was a “horrible failure” and settled the incident in an undisclosed lawsuit.

“We deeply apologize to Ms. Bahetoukilae for this unacceptable experience,” United said in a statement. “When she arrived in San Francisco, we ensured she got on the next flight to Paris and refunded her ticket. Our customer care team has reached out to her directly to ensure we make this right. We are also working with our team in Newark to prevent this from happening again.”

Miantsoko, her niece, said more than anything, she was concerned about what the entire incident revealed about United’s security.

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“With everything going on [in] this country people have to be more careful,” she said. “They didn’t pay attention. My aunt could have been anyone. She could have been a terrorist and killed people on that flight and they didn’t know, they didn’t catch it. This is not about money. This is about United getting serious with their employees.”

United is still reeling from the forcible removal of a passenger from one of its flights in April. Video of 69-year-old passenger David Dao went viral after he was dragged down the aisle of a plane by security, bloody and screaming, from what United called an “overbooked flight.” In a series of public relations missteps, the airline blamed Dao for being belligerent and then apologized for “reaccommodating” him before finally taking responsibility for the incident. The airline settled with Dao for an undisclosed amount.