Going Dutch.

[Gob]

A Dutch student learned the hard way that some deals are too good to be true when he landed in Sydney, Canada instead of Sydney, Australia.

Milan Schipper told the CBC that he bought his flight because it was much cheaper than all the other tickets.

Instead of heading straight to the beach, as he had planned, he found himself in near-blizzard conditions with nothing more than a light jacket.

Airline employees helped him book a return ticket home to Amsterdam.

The 18-year-old says he knew something was amiss when he had a layover in Toronto, and his connecting flight was in a small Air Canada plane.

"The plane was really small and so I figured, would that make it to Australia?" he told the CBC.

[dales]

Reminds me of an account that I read some years back about a man who wished to go to Auckland NZ and ended up in Oakland, CA!

[Lord Jim]

You see these stories from time to time, and I have to say that especially in this day and age I'm highly skeptical...

Especially when you're talking about an international flight...

If you're booking yourself online there's no way to "accidentally" book a flight for Athens Georgia when you really wanted to go to Athens Greece, and surely no travel agent would make this kind of bone-headed mistake...

I suspect that the stories you see about these kinds of "mistakes" involve people who knew perfectly well where they were booking a flight to...

But couldn't afford to go where they really wanted to go and thought that the attendant publicity about their plight might bring in enough donations for the trip they really wanted to take...

[Crackpot]

Travel agents are passé these days Jim.

[Lord Jim]

Plenty of them still plying their trade in Detroit:

https://www.google.com/search?q=travel+ ... jbLAEkZT6Q

[dales]

I can see that, Jim.

I would imagine the agents are kept rather busy with all the people wishing to leave Detroit.

[RayThom]

Travel agents are passé these days Jim.

My Ex was a travel agent. I particularly enjoyed the many "fam trips" we had together. Many pin-in-the-map three day weekend getaways. All for pennies on the dollar.

My best vacation ever was 29 days visiting the five major Hawaiian Islands, never staying in one hotel for more than three consecutive days, and often two meal a day at each hotel. It cost less than $1,000 between us.

[Scooter]

I suspect that the stories you see about these kinds of "mistakes" involve people who knew perfectly well where they were booking a flight to...

But couldn't afford to go where they really wanted to go and thought that the attendant publicity about their plight might bring in enough donations for the trip they really wanted to take...

I doubt very much that a difference of 200 euros would have been enough of a motivation to undertake a useless journey.

Some people really are just that stupid.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Travel agents are passé these days Jim.

Perhaps but that's not my experience. I have a guy in California, recommended by a South African friend, that I've used since 2007 to book airline tickets for me. He gets better prices than I can on Expedia etc. and (more to the point) he works hard to get my wife onto the same flight as me when I'm using FF miles and have to book my own on the UA website.

He says, "Tell me what you've booked, and I'll get her sitting next to you". And he does. Plus he always tells me less expensive ways to fly just in case I want to save the miles. Thanks, Jayden!

[Burning Petard]

Athens Georgia? I strongly recommend a visit to the National WWI memorial in Kansas City Missouri, and a road trip to beautiful Paris Missouri. Then head to Athens Missouri and a leisurely trip South along the Mississippi to take in all the Mark Twain tourist attractions.

Much better than Branson.

snailgate

[Bicycle Bill]

There is also an Athens located in Marathon County (Wisconsin), not too far from this site:



-"BB"-

[dales]

Midnight in Moscow, anyone?

[Lord Jim]

New Mexico...

[Lord Jim]

Some people really are just that stupid.

Yeah, but the level of stupidity required for this just beggars the imagination...

If you book a flight online, it's not like "Sydney Canada" and "Sydney Australia" are sitting right next to each other on your menu of choices, so you could inadvertently pick the wrong one...

But assuming you were stupid enough to make that mistake, and also manage to miss the words "CANADA" or "AUSTRALIA" on the email confirmation and itinerary you were sent, you would think you might notice that difference when you were standing in the terminal looking up at the flight board, with the words "SYDNEY CANADA" and "SYDNEY AUSTRALIA" on the list of flights...

That might be a clue...

(My personal opinion is that if you're dealing with someone that stupid, the best thing to do would be to take them down to the cargo hold and toss them out an airlock before they get a chance to breed...)

[Econoline]

I'm guessing that on the paperwork,instead of "Sydney, CANADA" it was abbreviated "SYDNEY NS CA"... whereas "Sydney, AUSTRALIA" would have been abbreviated "SYDNEY NSW AU". And he obviously booked his own flights and didn't even know that there was another Sydney that you could fly to. (Until I read this story I didn't realize that Sydney, Nova Scotia had an airport big enough for regular commercial flights--and I've been to Sydney, Nova Scotia!)

The flight board at his original departure airport would have simply said "TORONTO" and the board at Pearson International in Toronto would have simply said "SYDNEY" or "SYDNEY NS" (just like the departures board at LAX probably just says "SAN JOSE" rather than "SAN JOSE, USA" for your local San Jose) for his connecting flight; he realized his mistake when he saw the size of the plane he was boarding in Toronto. So yeah, you'd have to be pretty stupid to make this particular mistake, but not quite the level of stupid you might think.

SHEESH...I thought American students were bad at geography!

[Long Run]

And then imagine a distracted teenager (but I repeat myself) trying to do this on a small phone screen, and you get the incompetent result without having to resort to a theory involving trickery. And while it is a stupid result, it appears to arrive mainly from inexperience than native idiocy.