A 16-year-old flew to Dublin instead of Luton, London - Ryanair blamed her

• Alexandra Burt was booked onto a flight from Copenhagen to Luton
• But accidentally boarded an earlier plane that was going to Dublin
• Her boarding card was not checked properly by staff on two occasions 

The mother of a 16-year-old girl has hit out at Ryanair after her daughter was let on the wrong plane without her boarding pass being checked.

And after complaining, the airline blamed the girl for not reading the display screens.

Alexandra Burt was booked onto a flight with the low-cost airline from Copenhagen to Luton on Saturday. However, the teenager arrived early at her boarding gate, and seeing a Ryanair sign on the screen she assumed this was her flight home.

A 16-year-old girl failed to have her boarding pass checked and accidentally boarded the wrong Ryanair plane, ending up in Dublin instead of Luton

Unfortunately this was an earlier flight to Dublin.

She was not checked before entering the aircraft, and her boarding pass was only given a ‘cursory glance probably to check the seat number’ by the cabin staff.

She then settled into her seat, that just by luck was also free on the flight, and fell asleep.

It was only on landing that she realised something was amiss.

She peered out of the window at a body of water and ‘realised that she was not coming into Luton’

This led to frantic phone calls to the family home in Hertfordshire, as her parents tried desperately to help get her a flight home.

‘No one checked her pass at the gate in Copenhagen, they gave it a cursory glance probably to check the seat number on the plane, and clearly didn’t do a passenger count,’ mother Ellie Renshaw told MailOnline Travel.

‘I am gobsmacked and absolutely fuming as can’t believe given the “heightened sense of security” that they let this happen.

‘I thought this was only for Hollywood movies.

‘Alexandra is only 16, and will have been nervous and anxious travelling on her own. Her mistake would have been realised if the boarding pass was checked properly.

‘She told me that she only realised something was wrong when she woke up, looked out the window to see water, and realised she was not coming in to Luton.’

This was the reply Mrs Burt received when she complained to Ryanair at how her daughter had managed to board the wrong plane without being checked.

After first being offered a flight back to Heathrow or Gatwick, Ryanair eventually found space for Alexandra on a flight back to Luton, where she was met some time after midnight by her relieved family.

Her original flight was scheduled to land around 5.30pm on the Saturday.

‘She was absolutely exhausted, but like myself, gobsmacked at how she had been able to travel on the wrong plane unchecked,’ continued Mrs Renshaw.

‘It makes you think that if this can happen as it did so easily, who else could be getting planes that we don’t know about?’

After emailing a letter of complaint to Ryanair, Mrs Renshaw was sent a reply she says has left her ‘angry and totally fuming’.

In the letter, the airline points out that ‘each customer’s boarding card clearly states their flight number and destination’, and states that it is ‘the responsibility of every passenger to ensure they follow the correct procedure’.

‘Nowhere in their reply do Ryanair address this security lapse that is quite serious,’ added Mrs Renshaw.

‘The whole thing has left me angry and fuming.’

An aviation security official said that if Ryanair’s gate staff had checked the boarding pass Alexandra would not have ended up in the wrong country

A top aviation security official, who wishes to remain anonymous, has told MailOnline that checking the boarding pass was ‘basic security’.

‘The gate staff should have checked the boarding pass, normally by scanning it, as this is a basic security process and also ensures you have a correct passenger manifest,’ the source said.

‘The manifest is important when it comes to immigration and on those mercifully rare occasions when there is an accident.

‘If the gate staff had scanned the boarding pass, this mis-boarding would not have happened because the computer system would have shown the error.’

And discussing Ryanair’s response to Mrs Renshaw’s complaint, the security expert added: ‘The response from Ryanair is “computer says” and does not deal with the seriousness of the incident.

‘This has all the hallmarks of a low-level assistant failing to recognise that this was not another simple case of a passenger missing a flight and just selecting a standard reply from a drop-down menu.’

Ryanair told MailOnline: ‘It is the primary responsibility of each adult customer (over 16) to ensure they board the correct aircraft. We have asked our handling agents at Copenhagen to ensure that this error does not recur.’

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