Man boards wrong flight at SFO. It happens more than you think.

A man boarded a United flight at San Francisco International Airport earlier this month that was bound for Florida and it wasn’t until reaching his seat that he and the airline both discovered his boarding pass was for an entirely different international flight. 

Although the man’s boarding pass was reportedly for a flight to Mexico, he managed to bypass United’s gate and make it onto flight 221 to Orlando International Airport on Dec. 1, according to an SFGATE staff member who was on the flight. The man was removed from the flight and apparently missed his international flight. 

The mishap highlights a persistent error in commercial aviation where travelers are capable of bypassing gate agents to get on a plane without proper documentation. 

In a statement to SFGATE, United confirmed that its Dec. 1 flight to Orlando had an erroneous passenger. “We followed up at the airport to understand how this mis-boarding happened,” United wrote.

United tracks these incidents, as they happen on occasion. A spokesperson for the airline explained to SFGATE on the phone that there was another United flight on Dec. 1 involving a passenger misboarding a flight within its network. 

Airlines have a system in place to ensure that travelers board the correct flight — from signage at the gate to individually scanning boarding passes — but human error prevails. 

The Transportation Security Administration clears every traveler who passes through security, but as the man from Copenhagen or the back-to-back United flights indicate, people do find their way onto airplanes they weren’t supposed to be on.