Once in a while you’ll hear a story of someone accidentally ending up on a flight they didn’t intend to take. However, here’s an especially bad example of that…
AirSial sends man to Jeddah instead of Karachi
On the evening of July 7, 2025, a Pakistani electrical engineer named Malik Shahzain was supposed to fly from Lahore (LHE) to Karachi (KHI) with AirSial, a private Pakistani airline.
He arrived at the airport on schedule, and even checked in his bag for the correct flight, and then headed to the departure gate. That’s when things went wrong — instead of boarding a 634-mile domestic flight, he ended up on a 2,273-mile international flight, to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (JED).
According to the passenger, “there were two AirSial aeroplanes on the tarmac, one headed to Karachi and the other to Jeddah,” and “the staff, without checking properly, put me on the international flight, and I only realised this when, even after two hours of flying time, we did not land.”
Upon arrival in Jeddah, the man was questioned by immigration officials “for hours,” as he didn’t have his passport on him. Eventually they believed his version of events — that he was truly put on the incorrect flight — and authorities directed the airline to put him on the next flight back to Pakistan.
Even then, the ordeal wasn’t over. The man was accommodated on a flight to Lahore, his origin point, and airline officials told him that he’d have to arrange his own ticket to Karachi. As you’d expect, the man is angry about how this played out, saying “I underwent a 15-hour ordeal where I ended up in Jeddah and had to endure hours of interrogation.”
His bag ended up in Karachi, as it was supposed to, making the situation even worse. As of now, the traveler hasn’t received a formal response or apology from the airline, which is something he is demanding.
Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority is investigating the incident, with an official stating that “a passenger boarding the wrong flight by mistake can happen, but we have never come across a case where a domestic passenger ended up on an international flight.”
A lot has to go wrong for this mistake to happen
Millions of people travel by air every single day, so of course things are bound to go wrong every once in a while. However, the number of things that had to go wrong here is quite remarkable. It’s one thing if someone were trying to sneak onto the wrong flight, but that wasn’t the case here. Looking at this situation:
- First the man had to be directed onto the wrong aircraft, somehow, with no sort of verification of his boarding pass
- Then the man had to sit down in a seat that wasn’t otherwise occupied, or if there was a duplicate seating issue, the crew presumably didn’t follow the correct procedures
- Then the man had to have not noticed throughout the boarding process that the flight was bound for Saudi Arabia; you’d think there would have been an announcement from the crew about the destination, the flight time, etc., or even just conversation with fellow passengers
It must’ve been quite the awkward moment when at some point during the flight, the man fully processed that he was on a flight to Jeddah, and not Karachi.
Bottom line
A traveler who intended to take a domestic flight within Pakistan ended up in Saudi Arabia instead, after boarding the wrong flight. There were reportedly two aircraft on the apron, and somehow he ended up on the wrong one, and the mistake wasn’t caught until well into the flight.
He ended up being interrogated in Saudi Arabia for hours, before ultimately being returned to Lahore, and being told he’d have to make his own way to Karachi, the destination he had purchased a ticket for.
What do you make of this AirSial flight debacle?
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