Wrong Passenger On Plane: Female Passenger Questioned By Asiana Airlines After Incident

The wrong passenger on a plane caused the flight to return to the departing airport, likely for safety precautions. According to Fox News, officials say that a female passenger boarded an Asiana Airlines plane in Hong Kong, heading for Incheon, South Korea, early Monday. However, the woman was not supposed to be on that flight. Apparently she had a boarding pass for a flight to the same destination on board Jeju Air, which was scheduled to depart about 40 minutes later.

“Police were to question the passenger at Hong Kong’s airport. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity and gave no further details because their company was still checking details of the incident,” reports Fox News.

The wrong passenger on the plane was identified in flight, but details about how the flight crew knew that the woman was on the wrong flight in unclear. The 259 passengers were presumably told what was going on, as the pilot turned the plane around, and landed safely back in Hong Kong. The plane had been in flight for about an hour before the discovery was made. According to The Rakyat Post, the aircraft was flying over Taiwan when the pilot decided to return to Hong Kong.

“We found out that a wrong person was onboard, so we returned to Hong Kong. The local police are investigating the passenger to find out whether he took the wrong plane by mistake or intentionally,” said an official from Asiana. According to the Korean Times, this was not a misunderstanding, but rather a lack of attention from airport staff.

Evidently, security at the boarding gate failed to check to see if the name on the boarding pass matched the name on the woman’s passport. As of now, officials seem to think that the woman that was supposed to be on the Jeju flight switched boarding passes with another passenger.

The wrong passenger on a plane can obviously be a security risk, which is what most people immediately think of when they hear stories like this. As of now, it doesn’t sound like this woman was trying to cause a problem — perhaps she was just trying to get on an earlier flight for one reason or another.

With the few plane crashes over the past 12 months (two Malaysia Airlines planes, and one Air Asia plane), things like this have people concerned. While two of the other incidents have been solved, Malaysia Airlines flight 370 is still missing one year after it disappeared from radar. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, there was just a story about an air traffic supervisor being asleep on the job.

[Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]