MANGALORE: Boarding a wrong bus or train may not be uncommon occurrence, but an aircraft? In a first, a Bahrain passenger, bound for Dhaka to attend his child’s funeral last week, landed at Mangalore, southern India, instead.

Mohammed Alam Mamtazuddin, who was supposed to board a Gulf Air flight for Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital, landed at Mangalore’s Bajpe airport on May 25 by an Air India Express flight. The immigration officials, who were informed of this lapse by the airlines, deported him by the next AIE flight to Dubai.

An officer in charge of the immigration was shocked by this incident. “We have deported or detained people on the basis of fake passports, invalid visa etc. But this is for the first time I’m coming across such a case. How can there be a failure at multiple levels,” he questioned.

“In case he was an Indian, based on the validity of documents we would have deported or detained him. In case of foreigners we only deport unless there is a notice against that person,” said the official.

The Indian Airlines management here also is perplexed. “How can such multiple level checking failures occur?

The first mistake occurred during the check-in where the passenger was issued a Bahrain-Mangalore boarding card. But what was the passenger doing? We understand that the passenger was not in a proper state of mind after his child’s loss.

“But how can one miss the announcements? Moreover, the passenger spoke good Hindi. At some point he should have realised that he had boarded the wrong flight - at least by looking at the interior of the aircraft. It is shocking,” said the AI official.

By arrangement with Times of India