84-yr old woman mistakenly flown to wrong country

Talk about walking into a strange land...

An 84-year-old woman who was left unattended in a wheelchair, was erroneously put on an Easyjet flight to Malta when she was actually going to Athens.

According to reports, Argyro Aretaki, who speaks no English, was supposed to receive special assistance to her plane, which was arranged by her son, Dimitri Aretakis.

Instead she was unattended in Terminal 1 near adjacent gates with similar flight numbers: one to Malta, one to Athens, both of which were were scheduled to depart within 10 minutes of each other.

According to her son, "when she realized no one was going to take her to her plane she decided to get up and follow the crowd," and wound up 550 miles off course in Malta, with her baggage in Athens.

The woman was reportedly allowed to board the wrong plane to Malta despite the boarding pass to Athens, and when what she thought was her seat was occupied, the flight crew simply found her a different one.

Son, Aretaki said his mother was not aware she was in Malta instead of Athens, "but when no one was at the airport to collect her she realized that something was wrong. She became very distressed until another airport user took her to the information center.”

At which point airport staff in Malta found Aretaki's number and called him after she landed. However, rather than take a flight straight to Athens that night, Aretaki was forced to spend the night in Malta, fly back to Manchester the next day, then fly to Athens.

Reacting to the incident, a Manchester Airport spokesperson acknowledged the error saying the episode was “an error we are taking very seriously. As part of our investigation we plan to introduce additional procedures such as additional signage and wayfinding for assistance staff.”

Easyjet, the airline which erroneously took the woman to Malta said they had put in place corrective measures to prevent any reoccurrences and also refunded the cost of the flight and awarded compensation.