A British couple boarded a Ryanair plane back to Stansted airport from France - only to realise shortly before landing that they were on the wrong flight.
In fact, they were descending towards Madrid, some 800 miles away from their home in Fulham, London.
Elise Mallia and Jessy Jezequel had travelled to Marseille from the UK to watch a football match in mid-March.
On 21 March they went to the airport to catch their Ryanair flight shortly before 3pm, heading to what they were sure was the correct gate.
They showed their tickets and boarded with no problems, only getting an inkling during the flight that something might be off.
“An hour into our flight, Jesse said he thought he heard a flight attendant say Madrid, but we thought he had dreamed it,” says Ms Mallia.
“But after that we started realising all the flight attendants were speaking Spanish.
“When we asked, they told us we were going to Madrid - and we had no idea how that was possible.”
The pair had had their boarding passes scanned three times en route to the gate, and were flabbergasted that they’d been able to get on the wrong aircraft.
“We were baffled and so were the flight attendants,” says Ms Mallia.
“We got home in the end, but we still have no idea how it happened.
“It’s not like getting the wrong bus - we literally ended up in a different country!”
To make things even odder, Ms Mallia swears she had seen “Madrid” as the destination on the neighbouring gate to theirs - even joking that they should hop on the other flight and continue their travels in Spain.
On landing in Spain, they set about trying to get themselves home.
“We were panicking and tried to explain to the staff that we weren’t supposed to be in Spain,” says Ms Mallia.
Everyone thought we were crazy at first - until we showed them our boarding passes.
“How did nobody notice our boarding passes, or notice there were two extra passengers on the flight?
“Surely you shouldn’t be able to get on the wrong plane without anybody noticing!”
It eventually took the couple five hours to get home after getting a different flight out of Madrid.
They say they have have tried to contact Ryanair since, but with no luck.
A spokesperson for Ryanair said: “Mr Jezequel and Ms Mallia boarded their flight from Marseille to London Stansted through the correct gate.
“However, these passengers then failed to follow the allocated route to the aircraft departing for London Stansted, crossed an unauthorised area and wrongly boarded a flight departing to Madrid.
“Upon arriving at Madrid Airport, these passengers then realised their error and Ryanair staff were notified of these misrouted passengers. Mr Jezequel and Ms Mallia were accommodated on a flight from Madrid to London Stansted later that day.
“It is each passenger’s responsibility to ensure they board the correct aircraft.”
It’s not the first time this has happened on a Ryanair flight - in 2020, a woman claimed she ended up more than 2,500km away from her intended destination after boarding the wrong plane.
Inka Fileva, 30, says she was due to fly to Valencia in Spain, but was somehow able to board an aircraft bound for Kiev, Ukraine.
