When Víctor Calderón arrived at the main cabin of the United Airlines flight at LA International Airport, he plugged in his headphones and settled into his economy seat for what he thought was a flight to Houston.
Like many regular fliers, he tuned out the pre-flight briefings and instead watched movies and listened to some music. A flight attendant later offered the 54-year-old a pillow, which he found unusual on a domestic flight. After two hours in the sky, he was given his first meal.
“How strange,” Calderón thought to himself as he saw the taste of the Asian dish. “Usually they just serve snacks and soda.”
After about six hours, it became clear that something was wrong. Why didn’t they come to Houston, a 3½ hour flight from LAX? Alarmed by his condition, Calderón informed the flight attendant that he had to be in Houston by 5 pm to catch a flight to his final destination in Managua, Nicaragua.
The Salvadoran-born Angeleno found out he was already on a 5,400-mile flight to Tokyo.
Calderón, in an interview on Wednesday about the August incident, said he was surprised. He said when he boarded there were a number of gates nearby, including the gate for the international flight, which was departing at about the same time as his flight to Texas. And the seat assigned to him on his Houston flight, 34D, was empty on the Tokyo flight.
Calderón said that after arriving at the airport he asked the staff more than once to direct him to Gate 75A, which was the gate shown on his printed boarding pass.
When he boarded, the ticket seller “just took the ticket and photographed it,” Calderón said.
So, once he arrived in Tokyo, was Calderón able to make the best of a bad situation and look for a world-class city?
No. This was not unlike the New York City-Paris switcheroo of the 1992 film “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”
He said the flight attendants warned him that he could be arrested for leaving the airport because this act is considered “illegal.” According to the US State Department, visitors must have a valid passport and proof of a return or onward ticket.
A few hours after he arrived on Aug. 8, 2025, Calderón was put on another flight back to Los Angeles, he did not step outside the international wing of Haneda airport.
“I was really scared, to be honest. [Especially] about everything that happened in the past [with immigration] and even more so when the chief of police told me that I could be arrested. I thought the worst,” he said, “They will think I’m a terrorist, so I was scared.”
United Airlines helped reroute Calderón to Nicaragua — and the airline offered its seat in first class to accommodate the encounter. He reached his destination 48 hours after his arrival.
In a statement, United officials said they had reached out to the airport team to understand how this happened and apologized to the customer for their experience, providing travel credits and a refund.
“We always advise customers to monitor the signs at the gate and boarding announcements to ensure that the flight they are boarding is going to their destination,” the airline added.
Calderón said his compensation was $300 in flight credit, less than half of what he paid for his first flight.
Outraged, he contacted the consumer investigative unit of Telemundo 52 in Los Angeles, which protects Spanish-speaking viewers from fraud, scams and unfairness.
“We had never heard of a case like this,” said journalist Azalea Iñiguez, “where someone was able to board a flight that was not authorized to be on that flight and, moreover, that the airline did not give them enough. [compensation].”
Calderón paid $655 for his first flight. He also had to buy clothes while his luggage was left elsewhere, and he had to pay for a hotel in Managua because his initial plans to sleep were thwarted by a mix-up.
“The airline was actually holding him responsible for this mistake,” Iñiguez said. “How did he get on that plane with a boarding pass [for Houston] and that no one has found him.”
Telemundo 52 Responde asked United Airlines to review its decision, attaching receipts for the original flight, hotel and clothes purchased by Calderón, which totaled $1,095. This month, the airline “reconsidered the compensation offered” and gave him a total of $1,000 in travel credits, according to the newspaper.
Calderón said his experience left him with an important lesson – “the first thing is to make sure it’s the right gate” – but also with concerns about airport security.
“There should be strict security here, and look what happened to me,” said Calderón. “That means our security is at risk.”
