by Donald Wood
Last updated: 1:10 PM ET, Mon May 8, 2017
The United Airlines public relations disaster train continues chugging right along, as a woman claims she was allowed to board a flight heading 3,000 miles in the wrong direction.
According to ABC New York, French-speaking Lucie Bahetoukilae was preparing for her journey from Newark, New Jersey to Paris, France when United Airlines officials announced a gate change for her flight in English, which she did not understand.
Bahetoukilae arrived at the boarding gate and handed her ticket to United Airlines staff, which they stamped without double checking the destination. When she boarded the plane, her seat was already taken and flight attendants moved her to another seat, once again failing to realize she was heading to the wrong destination.
Instead of flying to Paris, Bahetoukilae was seated on a flight heading to San Francisco.
After landing and working with airline employees, Bahetoukilae was forced to wait 11 hours in San Francisco before being sent on another flight to France. The whole ordeal took 28 hours, according to Bahetoukilae's niece Diane Miantsoko.
While United Airlines refunded the price of her ticket and offered her a voucher for another trip to Newark, Bahetoukilae and her family were more concerned by the security lapse that allowed a random person on the wrong plane.
[READMORE] READ MORE: Bad Customer Service Bites Everyone Back[/READMORE]
"With everything going on this country people have to be more careful," Miantsoko told ABC New York. "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."
United Airlines offered an apology for the way the situation was handled, and a spokesperson said the company is working to prevent situations like this from ever happening again. The incident was settled via confidential lawsuit, in which the airline called the situation "a horrible failure."
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