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Comment by victorbjorklund | Hacker News Reader

I always secretly hope I get on the wrong plane and end up somewhere fun. It does seem like it can happen from time to time since Ryanair now always informs "if you are on the wrong plane tell us!".

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I once (accidentally) tried this when travelling around Australia many years ago. The gate changed at the last minute and I didn’t notice, so tried to board the wrong place.

As soon as they scanned my boarding pass all hell broke loose. Flashing red lights, sirens going off, the whole works. They were very nice about it, but yeah, that particular system made it impossible not to notice.

Hmm, that's odd. A few years ago, Australia didn't even check ID.

There's no mention of ID, just boarding pass. I'm pretty sure similar checks in NZ would catch wrong plane boarding (there's usually someone checking boarding passes on the plane too), with no ID check anywhere.

I mean that I'm surprised that there was a fuss over boarding at the wrong gate.

If you had a ticket, regardless of the name on it, you could walk into the airport, go to the gate, and get on a flight. It's a different situation, but things were generally pretty casual, and I just don't recall there being anything dramatic about a simple gate mixup.

Interestingly I just watched a funny sketch video about the difference between Australian and US Airport security [1]. Definitely not a serious comparison, I doubt that Australian airports are nearly as lax as the video makes it seem.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyJ00uqp670

Accurate.

But when you get off the plane in Tassie there's the k-9 search...

Bring all the drugs you want, but don't you dare bring a banana.

I mean, the passing the bag through without scanning is facetious, but Australian (domestic) security is much lighter than the US. You don’t need ID, you don’t need a ticket, and until recently it was only metal detectors everywhere rather than full body scanners.

Also, it wouldn’t be uncommon to joke around (although there are some hard-asses); if they legitimately did recognise a YouTube, I could see them getting a selfie together.

They wouldn't notice if you buy a ticket to one city but get on a flight to a different city?

If you want to go someplace fun, just book a ticket to someplace fun. I actually got in the wrong plane once. But I was already heading someplace fun, and I'm glad I didn't end up going somewhere I didn't want to go. I was in another country catching a connecting flight. My gate was changed but I didn't notice. I got in the plane. They let me. I was sitting in my seat when a gate agent came and got me.

I know a guy who ended up in San Jose, Costa Rica instead of California.

> I know a guy who ended up in San Jose, Costa Rica instead of California.

Every few years there is a story about tourists who turn up in Sydney, Nova Scotia, thinking they were going on vacation to Sydney, Australia.

They didn’t board the wrong flight, they booked the wrong ticket

A friend of mine runs a small tech conference every year in Portland, Maine. (You probably know where this is going.) One of the early years of the conference someone booked a ticket to Portland, Oregon which is probably the more expected locale for a tech conference. Forget if they actually flew there or if they just had to change the ticket.

It’s the civil aviation equivalent of “WONTFIX; working as intended”. :D

But it must be a wild surprise.

I was told of an Auckland/Oakland clusterfuck.

Think that was on buying a ticket and somehow hot noticing the vast price difference.

San Jose is the really confusing one imho. San Jose international in Cabo (SJD) just south of the California border and San Jose international (SJC) in California are spitting distance globally speaking so if flying from a third country you really need to make sure you got the right one as ticket prices alone wont give it away.

Sometimes you do everything right and the pilot screws up.

https://www.thelocal.de/20190325/british-airways-flight-ends...

That's a dispatch screw-up before departure, not a pilot.

That plane will have been on a valid flight plan but to the wrong place, there is no way for the flight crew to go to a completely different place than the flight plan. Because the air traffic control computers also have the flight plan. So their instructions are going towards the filed destination. Any discrepancy would be noticed on both sides very quickly because you get instructions that don't fit the plan.

The one thing the crew can screw up during the flight is landing at an airport right next to the destination when on a visual approach. By visually confusing the two airports. There are procedures to avoid it, but it still happens.

> By visually confusing the two airports. There are procedures to avoid it, but it still happens.

Like the 747 that landed at Jabara airport, a tiny corporate/general aviation airport.

Yes and some airport/approaches have a high enough risk that there is a warning. Düsseldorf for example has a box with something like "Don't confuse Essen airport X miles north-east when approaching runway 23" drawn on their approach as a caution. Because you're flying right over the top of that other airport, with the same runway direction.

The article says the pilot was handed the wrong paperwork, so somebody else screwed up.

The pilot is like the captain on the boat, it may be someone else’s fault but it’s his responsibility.

(I think this is why many pilots say on the intercoms before pushback as to where the plane is going, if they say Birmingham and the entire plane bursts into screaming and crying, then they know … they got it right ;) ).

This would be a neat variant of the scream test.

Don't worry, Oakland is renaming its airport to avoid confusion.

It's just as far from SF as SFO.

How about Costa Rica instead of Costa Del Sol? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhM_dDlhwSU

stayed in a hostel with a Dutch guy, big stoner, who ended up in Melbourne, Florida, instead of Australia

par for the course with that guy, amazed he could tie his shoes most days.

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