She had a plane ticket to Jacksonville, Florida; ends up nearly 1500km away in Jamaica

When the flight attendant on the Frontier Airlines service told Beverly Ellis-Hebard that she will soon be able to relax in Jamaica, she thought she was joking. After all Ellis-Hebard had a ticket for Jacksonville, Florida.

However, a set of circumstances meant that Ellis-Hebard had boarded the wrong plane, somehow without her passport.

She had arrived at the gate at Philadelphia Airport with plenty of time as she had just recovered from back surgery and was a bit slower than usual. She needed to go the bathroom and was told by an airline employee that she had about 20 minutes.

On returning she found that the plane had virtually boarded. The gate assistant even asked her: “Are you Beverly Ellis-Hebard?” as she was rushed on, without a check for a boarding pass or a passport.

Unfortunately unbeknown to her, there had been a late gate change for her Florida flight.

It was only after the plane had taken off that she was told by the cabin crew that they were heading to Jamaica and not Jacksonville.

She told ABC 7: “I said ‘I would love to be going there but I have a beach where I live’. She said. ‘Look at me. This plane is going to Jamaica.’ And I knew by the look on her face she wasn’t joking.”

Once landing on the Caribbean island, Ellis-Hebard was only allowed onto the jetbridge, where she had to wait for the return service to the US.

Frontier Airlines has said sorry for the mix-up.

“We extend our utmost apologies to Beverly Ellis Hebard for this unfortunate experience. We sincerely regret that Ms Ellis Hebard was able to board the wrong flight. As a gesture of our apology, we have issued a US$600 (NZ$945) Frontier Airlines flight voucher,” a spokesperson told ABC 7.

It is not the first time a passenger has arrived in a very different country than they were expecting.

Earlier this year one US flyer was all set for a trip to Australia, however he had booked the wrong Sydney; Kingsley Burnett landed in Sidney, Montana instead. The tiny town’s airport code is SDY, while the Sydney in Australia is SYD.

Also this year, TikTok user SopheAlice posted a video (note: language warning) with the message: “When you thought you’d booked flights to Budapest.” The problem? They were boarding a Ryanair flight to Bucharest – more than 800km away.

Back in 2014, a US dentist also got confused after booking first-class tickets to Granada in Spain, but ended up on Grenada, the Caribbean island.