Flyer Blames Eurowings for 8,000-Mile Detour
Joe Cortez August 16, 2017
Passenger flies from Cologne to Las Vegas instead of London Stansted Airport.
A European flyer says his airline allowed him to board the wrong flight, which lead to being waylaid by over 8,000 miles in a completely different country. Britain’s Daily Mail reports that the flyer, 29-year-old Samuel Janowsky, ended up on an aircraft bound for Las Vegas instead of his actual destination of London Stansted Airport (STN).
Janowsky was returning to London from Cologne, Germany, on a business trip. The flyer thought he was on the right flight on June 30, claiming three airport employees checked his boarding pass. However, after waking up from a short nap, he found himself flying past London and on to the “Neon Capital of the World.”
“I paid 12 euro so I could get wifi and Whatsapp my wife to explain,” Janowsky told the Daily Mail. “She was distraught and called Eurowings to complain.”
Upon landing in the United States without a passport, the flyer says he was treated as a “common criminal.” After being searched and interrogated by Customs and Border Protection officers, Janowsky was returned aboard another Eurowings flight to Cologne, where he had to find another flight back to STN.
Overall, his trip cost two days and over 17,000 miles in travel. Janowsky is complaining about the airline for not only allowing him aboard the wrong flight, but also costing him over $1,033 in airfare, food and hotels.
In a statement to the newspaper, Eurowings – a low-cost unit of Lufthansa Group – said that they were aware of the situation and placed the blame on a contractor.
“Due to an error by a service provider’s employee, the passenger managed to board the long-haul flight,” read a statement from Eurowings to the Daily Mail. “Eurowings conducted in-depth discussions with the service provider, in addition to requesting strict compliance with our quality standards.”
[Photo: Shutterstock]
no need for passport, a European government issued ID is enough to travel between Schengen countries and the UK.
Passengers with EU Government Issued Identity Card can fly into UK. As UK does not have an ID Card system same does not apply in the reverse.
Article says he landed in LAS sans passport. Didn't he need one to travel from Cologne to Stansted?
I'm sorry, but the passenger needs to take a large part of the responsibility for this himself. How many other people boarded the wrong flight? None? So all of the probably 50-100 on the STN flight and probably 100-200 on the LAS flight managed to get it right? That said, the staff should have picked it up. A total cluster all round.
Yes, Eurowings to blame for a breakdown in procedures, particularly for an international flight. But - the passenger must be extremely inattentive (perhaps for reasons he doesn't wish to explain) to contribute to the mistake.