A very easy mistake to make....

[Rods2]

...accidently flying to Edinburgh instead of Dusseldorf. I'm not talking about a confused passenger here but the regular London City to Dusseldorf BA flight.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47691478

[2boxerdogs]

Mistakes happen , simple mistake.
😀😁😂 Should have gone to Specsavers 😎

[dave the builder]

I've put the wrong postcode in before now 
never landed in Scotland though 

[Kevin Wood]

Kind of depressing that nobody in the cabin noticed that they hadn't :

a) flown over the sea shortly after departure.
b) flown into the sun, given that Dusseldorf is East and it was a morning flight.

[Field Marshal Dr. Opti]

Kind of depressing that nobody in the cabin noticed that they hadn't :

a) flown over the sea shortly after departure.
b) flown into the sun, given that Dusseldorf is East and it was a morning flight.

Yes....I'm surprised there was no 'where has the sea gone' head scratching.

[BazaJT]

They'll have been too busy updating their farcebook page to watch where they were going and probably thought that as long as they landed somewhere different to where they took off from the passengers wouldn't notice after all the Scots do talk "foreign"

[Viral_Jim]

One more reason (not that I need one) that Satan will be skating to work before I set foot on a BA aircraft 

[Doctor Gollum]

One more reason (not that I need one) that Satan will be skating to work before I set foot on a BA aircraft 

Not that that was a BA aircraft

[Viral_Jim]

No, some german subcontracting outfit iirc? I bet they still charged their over inflated prices mind...

[Mister Rog]

All goes to reinforce my policy of never flying unless absolutely essential. Dusseldorf ? I'll drive. Done it many times.

[Entwood]

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 .......   

[Doctor Gollum]

They could equally have boarded the passengers onto the wrong aircraft... Which could have serious consequences if they had loaded the Duesseldorf bags onto the Edinburgh flight and vice versa... 

[Varche]

40 years ago we managed to board a plane going to Germany from Corfu due to lax airport procedures - we actually asked which plane for Birmingham. Cabin crew rightly told us to leave the plane. We then spotted the correct plane at about the same time as a group of gun toting cops spotted us.


Im with Entwood on this. Surely the RAF would have been ultimately scrambled as an unidentifiedvaircraft entered British airspace without a flight plan? The media just love a funny story especially when were are all sodden with the B word.

[Kevin Wood]

Yep, the crew would have briefed on the flight to Edinburgh and likely the aircraft nav computer would have been loaded with the route to Edinburgh, along with a flight plan filed for the specific airframe with ATC. If any of that didn't line up it would have been identified pretty quickly.

More likely, the cabin crew and passengers ended up on the wrong flight but that doesn't make such a sexy headline!

[Sir Tigger KC]

Ryanair had a little dig at BA about this on Twitter but got their fingers burnt! 

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