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Air Canada is investigating how a woman who thought she was boarding a flight back home to Halifax ended up in Toronto instead.

Lesa Tymchuk, 41, somehow got onto the wrong plane in Ottawa on Monday. «

This should never have happened,» Isabelle Arthur, an Air Canada spokeswoman, said Wednesday. «We're looking into it. We're taking it seriously. We are conducting an extensive internal investigation to determine where there was a communication breakdown.»

Tymchuk flies between Ottawa and Halifax every few weeks and says the airport routine is like second nature to her.

But this time something went awry and she was let onto the wrong plane by Air Canada staff who scanned her boarding pass before letting her proceed.

«You can barely get a lipstick on a plane and then you end up in the wrong city,» said Tymchuk, who was in Ottawa to visit her boyfriend.

Tymchuk's flight was supposed to board at 1:20 p.m., about the same time another Air Canada flight was boarding.

She was directed to her seat — a seat no one else came to claim — and Air Canada employees failed to notice there was an extra passenger on the flight.

Tymchuk said she didn't realize something was wrong until she looked out the plane's window and saw the bright lights of Toronto.

Arthur said Air Canada carries 30 million passengers a year and something like this is extremely rare.

(Ottawa Sun)