United's way: Buy ticket to Paris, get free fligth to San Francisco
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ABC New York reports that a French woman who doesn’t speak English headed to the gate at Newark Liberty International Airport listed on her boarding pass.
Her niece told the station that a gate attendant scanned her pass and let her on the plane, where she headed for her seat.
But she claims that when someone else was sitting there already, a flight attendant looked at her boarding pass and then simply seated her elsewhere.
Someone was in her seat, it seems, because the flight was going to San Francisco, not Paris: Unbeknownst to her, United had changed the gate at the last minute.
She says the announcement was not made in French, and she didn’t receive a notification email about the switch.
Because of the mixup, she ended up flying almost 3,000 miles in the wrong direction, and had to endure an 11-hour layover once she landed in San Francisco.
By the time United finally got her to France, she had been traveling for more than 28 hours. ■