Around 90 EasyJet passengers at Birmingham Airport mistakenly boarded a flight to Berlin instead of their intended destination, Barcelona, on Sunday afternoon, 1 November. The mix-up occurred after a last-minute gate change, leaving travellers bewildered as they realised they were on the wrong aircraft.
Passengers notice German speakers
One passenger, who believed he was on the 3.05pm service to Barcelona, noticed a suspicious number of German speakers around him. After raising his concerns with cabin crew, he discovered that he and many fellow travellers had made the same mistake. Almost all of the plane had boarded the wrong aircraft, with roughly 90 travellers holding tickets for the Spanish city successfully passing through the gate with their boarding passes.
A mother whose son was supposed to be flying to Barcelona told BirminghamLive: "Birmingham Airport made a massive mistake. My son boarded the plane (obviously showing his boarding pass), but together with the passenger next to him thought it was a bit bizarre that many people were speaking German."
Passengers forced to disembark
The affected passengers were required to leave the Berlin-bound aircraft and walk to the opposite end of the terminal to board their correct flight, which reportedly suffered delays as a result. The mother added: "They all had to disembark and go to the other end of the terminal where they finally boarded the right plane."
She expressed concern about the incident, saying: "In the days of massive security measures how on earth could this blunder have happened? Your boarding pass should have alerted the check in team that it did not match the flight number. I don't know about you but I find this quite worrying."
EasyJet apologises and investigates
BirminghamLive reached out to Birmingham Airport, which indicated that the query would need to be directed to the airline itself. An EasyJet spokesperson responded: "Following a change in gate number, a number of passengers due to travel from Birmingham to Barcelona boarded a flight to Berlin and so we are looking into this with our ground handling provider at Birmingham to understand why this happened."
The spokesperson added: "EasyJet works closely with our airports to ensure the security of all passengers. This was quickly identified and customers de-boarded the aircraft and subsequently travelled on the correct flight. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused by the delay."
