Internet couple put heads up their northwest passages.

Interesting addition this morning to Great Internet Disasters, volume 1.

A British couple decide to book their holiday flight to Australia via the Internet. They click on ‘Sydney’, fill out the details, everything seems to go to plan and they arrive at the airport. Excellent.

They board their plane for a 23-hour flight and, unexpectedly, find there’s a stop over in Canada. Except it’s not a stop over, but they don’t know it yet. Next they board a 25-seater before landing and seeing the sign ‘Welcome to Sydney, Nova Scotia’. It finally begins to dawn on them…they clicked in the wrong box…

*"And after just more than an hour they landed in sleepy Sydney, Cape Breton Island, off the north eastern coast of Canada. The former-mining town has a population of just 26,083 and one of the highest unemployment rates in Canada. "

“They said they were enjoying looking at the pick-up trucks, and eating the local lobster.”*

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2172858.stm
Schadenfreude much ? :smiley:

Heh. Red about this in the papers yesterday. If you don’t know the difference between Sydney, Australia and Sydney, Nova Scotia… that’s sort of odd. Just be glad they didn’t go to Sidney, Victoria, BC instead!

F_X

They changed my regular gate when I was flying weekly from Houston to Dallas. I went to C31 as usual and we taxied out, then just prior to takeoff the attendant said “Thank you for using Continental as your carrier to New Orleans today.”

They were heading to Sydney, NSW, in the middle of winter – temperatures average about 50 degrees farenheit (10 celcius) there this time of year, I believe. The high today is supposed to be 17 celcius.

The weather is way better in Nova Scotia this time of year. The high today is supposed to be 26 celcius (79 farenheit), with a low of 17 celcius.

I think they lucked out.

To be fair Danalan, I think it’s a bit warmer than that in Sydney. Other than that I’m with you all the way, who wants to fly to Sydney, NSW Much better off in Melbourne :stuck_out_tongue:

Man talk about a special type of stupid!

[Heh. Love the thread title.]

At least they didn’t land in Sydney, NY. There’s no airport there.

I was in real danger of pulling one of these myself. (Well, not real danger . . . I doubt I could have gotten to the point of buying plane tickets without figuring it out, but it makes a better story if it sounds like a skin-of-the-teeth thing, eh? ) There’s a meeting in Birmingham, that I need to go to, but my boss (who is Australian) pronounced it Bir-ming-um, like I’d pronounce Birmingham, England, not Birming-ham, like I’d pronounce Birmingham, Alabama.

So I spent a good solid two days thinking I had to go to England, and was already stressing about international flights and passports and mad-cow disease . . .

I especially liked what the rent-an-expert chap said on the BBC news.

“It’s a case of buyer beware. You should always read the small print… and these two should have read the large print that said CANADA.” Rent-an-expert then collapsed into snorts and giggles.

Former Travel Agent checking in.

When the internet became popular with booking your travel, we had a nice client call us and tell us he just needed car and hotel in Charleston, SC for specific dates. He had already gotten his tickets via the internet, he proudly told us.

WELLLLLLLLL, he was sure surprised to find himself landing in Charleston WV. Several hundred miles away from where he needed to be.

He tried to blame us, the airlines and who knows who else, but in the end, all he had to do was look in the mirror.

The BBC story now includes reader responses via the Web. A number of people shared similar horror stories or close calls. But I especially liked the wit who replied:

I remember back in June, 1986 (which was about the time I got married), there was a guy who wanted to fly from Los Angeles to Oakland, CA. Apparently, he got on the wrong plane.

He got on an Air New Zealand flight…to Auckland, New Zealand. (I understand that New Zealanders pronounce that very much like “Oakland”, so the mistake was almost forgivable.)

Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, after a few hours of flight, he realized that he wasn’t headed for Oakland at all. Air New Zealand was kind enough to bring him back to Los Angeles the day after his flight landed in NZ.

The guy became something of a celebrity in Los Angeles, and even appeared on The Tonight Show. Don’t ask me why he became a celebrity, or even why he’d want people to celebrate his abject stupidity. Maybe he’s related to the folks the OP spoke of…

And I’ve been looking but I can’t find, the elderly woman who was put on a plane, in London I think, and she was supposed to fly to San Jose, California, but she ended up in San Jose, Puerto Rico or Costa Rica, something like that? Somebody’s mum who was supposed to be flying to visit her American grandkids, got put on the wrong plane.

It was this spring sometime.

Just for reference Goosie, stick something like ‘San Jose’ + plane into the top search box of http://news.bbc.co.uk/ - they carry most silly stories:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2019689.stm

“Fortunately she had not spoken to anybody on the plane and only thought it was a bit strange when she got off the flight and everyone was speaking Spanish,” she said.

  • obviously, this was before she’d been to California :slight_smile:

I quite liked this reader comment on the BBC link:

I heard a story once about a Japanese tourist at London Paddington station on her way to Heathrow who wanted to go to Turkey… so the staff put her on a train to Torquay.
Dave, UK

  • can’t go wrong with images of bemused Japanese tourists…
    Always nice to start the day with a little Bacharach/David number…“Do you know the way to San Jose…”

Years ago I was trying to book a flight to Columbus, Georgia from Cleveland. The ticket agent thought I wanted Columbus, Ohio, and was arguing with me over flight numbers and such until we caught the error. She was so annoyed she told me the computers had just gone down and I should call back in a hour…which I’m sure was after her shift ended.

Well, at least Cape Breton has a fine musical tradition to entertain those poor folks. Lots of fine fiddle players and harpers spring from that island. Solid celtic music on the Canadian coast!