by Donald Wood
Last updated: 11:49 AM ET, Tue June 9, 2015
Photo via Wikipedia
A chain of errors and misunderstandings resulted in an elderly woman flying to Malta instead of Athens, Greece last month.
According to Greg Keraghosian of Yahoo.com, an 84-year-old named Argyro Aretaki was dropped off at Manchester Airport in England by her son on May 18 and was supposed to receive special assistance. Instead, she was left unattended between terminals.
Unfortunately for Aretaki, she was between two gates with similar flight numbers and was accidently boarded on the flight to Malta instead of the flight to Athens. While she ended up in Malta - around 500 miles from her target destination - her bags still ended up in Greece.
Onboard the flight to Malta, Aretaki found her seat was already occupied. Instead of double checking the woman's ticket and finding the error, EasyJet crew members found her an open seat.
When asked about the ordeal by Yahoo.com, Aretaki's son said, "My mother was not aware that she was in Malta rather than Athens. But when no one was at the airport to collect her she realized that something was wrong. She became very distressed until another airport user took her to the information center."
Once the Malta airport understood what had happened, officials called the woman's son to straighten the ordeal out. Instead of flying Aretaki directly to Athens, she was forced to stay on the island nation overnight before flying back to Manchester and then onto Greece.
Both EasyJet and Manchester Airport have acknowledged that this was a huge mistake and have taken responsibility. Each company has stated that changes will be made to ensure this situation doesn't happen again.
This isn't the first time a situation like this has occurred, though. TravelPulse's Patrick Clarke recently shared a story about a woman in New York who was flown to Barbados instead of Rochester, New York.
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