There was a mishap in Nepal that resulted in a Buddha Air flight landing at the wrong airport. The machine touched down in Pokhara, around 255 kilometers away, instead of in Janakpur. The incident occurred last Friday and is now being investigated by the civil aviation authority. 

69 passengers originally wanted to take a domestic flight with an ATR72 operated by Buddha Air to Janakpur, but the plane landed in Pokhara. How exactly this could happen is still unclear, but local media write that a chain of unfavorable circumstances is the most likely cause. The weather conditions at the inland terminal of Kathmandu Airport were a bit unpleasant, so that the start could not be started until 15:00 p.m. local time. Everything then had to be done quickly, because the airline did not want to risk that the flight would be delayed again due to the weather after the clearance. Now several mistakes happened in the hustle and bustle: The plane that was originally supposed to fly to Pokhara was scheduled for Janakpur and vice versa. This was not really taken into account when boarding, so that the passengers boarded the now “wrong” aircraft. The crew did not know that the passengers did not know about the short-term exchange of the aircraft. So it happened that U4505 took off quickly, but the “wrong” passengers were on board.

Such incidents are very rare, but they also occur in Europe. The German airline WDL flew from London City to Edinburgh on behalf of British Airways. The passengers actually wanted to go to Düsseldorf. The flight plan from the previous day was mistakenly sent to the crew and the passengers mistakenly boarded the wrong aircraft. This happened in March 2019.