Lucie Bahetoukilae had a boarding pass for Newark Airport in New Jersey that read “Newark to Charles de Gaulle.” That should have been enough to get her home, but somehow it wasn’t.
Lucie went to the gate on her pass, handed it to the flight attendant who scanned it. Then the woman went to her assigned seat only to find someone there. Again a flight attendant looked at her pass and simply gave her a new seat.
When the plane landed, Lucie discovered she was in San Francisco. She had to wait 11 hours for a plane to Paris and in total traveled for 28 hours. It turned out that the original gate for the flight to Paris had changed and she got no notification despite safeguards.
United gave Bahetoukilae a flight voucher and said they were "working with their team in Newark to prevent this from happening again."