BBC Journalist Flies Under Wrong Identity On Iberia From Heathrow

With the number of people who travel by air, sometimes things are bound to go wrong. However, this is still really strange (thanks to Daniel for flagging this)…

Woman accidentally flies as someone else

BBC journalist Catherine Snowdon has written about a bizarre incident she faced on April 23, 2025, when flying from London (LHR) to Madrid (MAD). Specifically, she was on the 10:50AM flight that day, which was Iberia IB714, though she booked it as a codeshare through British Airways.

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Long story short, she accidentally traveled under the wrong identity, yet no one realized. At first, everything seemed normal enough:

• She attempted to use online check-in, but it didn’t work, so she headed to Heathrow Airport to do it in person
• She then tried to use a self-service kiosk, and that also didn’t work, with an “assistance required” message
• She then checked in with staff at the check-in counter, who handed her a boarding pass, and she proceeded to security; she acknowledges that she didn’t actually read the boarding pass in any detail
• She handed her passport and boarding pass to another member of staff at the gate, who let her on the plane
• Once onboard, she realized she was in business class, and she assumed it must have been a free upgrade

However, once she landed in Madrid, things got strange. She received an email that her return flight had been canceled. She asked BBC’s travel provider what happened, and what their plan was for getting her home. In response, the travel company said the flight was canceled because she no-showed on the outbound flight.

She explained that wasn’t the case, and that she was in fact on the flight, and was writing the message while waiting for her checked luggage. However, she received a further message to say that the airline was adamant that she hadn’t traveled on the flight.

That’s the point at which she looked at the boarding pass more closely, and noticed that the boarding pass wasn’t in her name, but instead, in the name of Huw H (the full name isn’t being used). She also realized that his name had been printed on the luggage tags.

So when she shared that, the airline reportedly responded that there’s no way she could have traveled with someone else’s documents. They refused to believe her, and as a result, the BBC had to buy her a new flight home (the airline has since refunded the cost of the extra ticket, and has given her a £500 goodwill voucher).

How could something like this happen?

It goes without saying that both the check-in agent and gate agent are supposed to verify that the name on the boarding pass matches the name on the passport. So how could this happen?

The woman does mention that her married name starts with the letter “H,” just like Huw H, but it’s otherwise a very different last name.

The journalist did some internet sleuthing, and managed to get in touch with someone who had a similar name — Jonathan Huw H — who flew on a British Airways flight a day after her, landing at Heathrow. However, he wasn’t booked on this particular flight.

A British Airways spokesperson (since the airline does ground handling for Iberia) has issued the following statement in regards to this:

“We’ve contacted our customer to apologise for this genuine human error. While incidents like this are extremely rare, we’ve taken proactive steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

I’m still puzzled by how this would happen. Mistakes happen, and I can understand how every once in a while, a check-in agent might somehow accidentally print the boarding pass for the wrong person. I can also understand how very rarely, a gate agent might not notice that names don’t match. Now, you’d hope that both of those things don’t happen with the same passenger, but obviously once in a while, it does.

But here’s the part I can’t wrap my head around. I would assume that she was handed a boarding pass for someone actually booked on the flight, no? The system is unlikely to just generate random names and create boarding passes for people who aren’t booked on the flight.

So you would think that if this mistake were made, it would at the latest be caught when two people try to board a flight with the same identity. Did it just so happen to be that the person named on the boarding pass no showed, after being booked on the flight?

Bottom line

A journalist accidentally traveled on a flight out of Heathrow under the wrong identity. She couldn’t check-in online, but then presented her passport at the check-in counter, was handed a boarding pass, and boarded with that boarding pass. Only after landing in Madrid did she realize that the boarding pass was in fact in someone else’s name, as her return flight had been canceled.

Anyone have any insights as to how this could happen?