My guess is the "press" are making a meal of this and actually ignoring what "probably" happened ... although I have no proof of this and it purely my conjecture.
It is imposible to "accidentaly" fly to the wrong destination in this manner ... Air Traffic Control / Flight Plans / Clearances would all be infringed minutes after takeoff and BIG questions asked by all the ground controllers.
It is highly likely that this is a "dispatch" problem by the airlines operations section, (or possibly a very simple cockup by the crew), in that the flight deck crew were sent to the wrong aircraft (or simply got on the wrong one ??
) and that the flight deck crew always intended to fly to Edinburgh, just on a different airplane !
Modern two pilot operation would not require the flight deck crew to converse with the cabin crew about destination at all .. cabin crew load aircraft, flight deck crew pitch up, start up and go !
It can, and does happen .... when I was in the RAF I was flight prepping my aircraft for a trip and a crew turned up ... but not the folks I expected .. so my opening gambit was "whats happened to *****, not coming now ??" to get a strange look from the incoming captain "No, I was always on this trip, where is ****? (another flt eng)" ... my response was ... "isn't that him over there (pointing at another Herc on the line)" ... followed by a mad rush of the 3 officers grabbing suitcases, bags, paperwork etc and rushing across the concrete to the correct airplane ..... they had misread the despatch board and were attending bay 26 not bay 16 where their aircraft was waiting .......