Flight Booking Typo Takes Tourist 8,000 Miles Off Course

[Marc]

Technology can certainly make planning air travel (slightly) easier, but not when you check your common sense and organic brain power at the gate. A twenty-one year old German tourist planned to take a trip to Sydney, Australia, but wound up 8,077 miles off-course -- headed instead for the small oil town of Sydney, Montana, after mistyping his destination into a flight booking Web site. The man didn't notice anything was wrong until he was about to board a flight from Portland to chilly Montana, dressed in summer vacation clothes. Not only did the man trust the website a little too completely, his mother didn't notice the mistake because she trusted her son's techno savvy, saying he was "usually good with computers." Good with computers perhaps -- but apparently not so good at the simple task of actually reading his itinerary...

[Jim Wynne]

Originally Posted by Marc

A twenty-one year old German tourist planned to take a trip to Sydney, Australia, but wound up 8,077 miles off-course -- headed instead for the small oil town of Sydney, Montana, after mistyping his destination into a flight booking Web site.

But his luggage probably went to Australia.

[Duke Okes]

This also indicates a poorly designed website. Had it used graphics to help the user (e.g., a map indicating the route to be taken), the error would likely have been caught.

[Jim Wynne]

Originally Posted by Duke Okes

This also indicates a poorly designed website. Had it used graphics to help the user (e.g., a map indicating the route to be taken), the error would likely have been caught.

The town in Montana is spelled Sidney (are you listening, Mr. Vianna? ) not Sydney, but that had to have been the first of several mistakes, which would have included failure to actually look at the tickets and itinerary. I think that probably a lot of people don't know how to spell "Sydney" but don't wind up in Montana because of it.

[bgwiehle]

Originally Posted by Marc

...mistyping his destination into a flight booking Web site.

Even travel agents make these mistakes. I know of a Texan lady whose tickets took her to Ontario, CA (California) when she expected to go to Ontario, CA (Canada)!

[blackbird]

why have places with the same names any way............we need to blame our ancestors for this one

[Mr Niceguy]

Strangely enough a misdirection involving Sydney and on-line booking has happened at least once before about 3 years ago, but this time it was Sydney Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. A British couple left London Heathrow checked through to "Sydney" via Halifax Nova Scotia. On arrival at Halifax their concerns were only raised when transferring to a small plane that was surely not going on a trans-continental flight. They boarded anyway. The difference with the above case was that they didn't have the funds to continue to Australia. I think the Cape Breton people looked after them though when it made the local news.

[harry]

I made a search and found that Sydney is indeed spelt as 'Sidney' in some other language (I guess it's Spanish). Can't blame a German for making that mistake!