That Moment When You Land in the Wrong Country: 7 Epic Airline Mixups
Thanksgiving has long been the busiest and most frenetic travel period in the U.S. This year, the trade organization Airlines for America predicts that a staggering 24.6 million passengers will take to the nation’s skies between November 21, and December 2.
Amazingly, despite the huge numbers of people being shuffled through our airports, most travelers will be delivered safe and sound to their destination.
But there’s always a tiny minority who suffer a journey mishap straight out of Planes, Trains and Automobiles and end up eating their Thanksgiving turkey (or doing without) much farther away than planned.
Here’s a roundup of real-life travel snafus that are enough to make you reconsider your trip:
Wrong city — twice!
Lightning struck twice for 85-year-old Maria Nieves, who managed to be transported to the wrong city on two consecutive trips over the holidays. On Thanksgiving 2011, the wheelchair-bound senior was accidentally flown to Tampa, Fla., instead of New Orleans (she claimed a representative for Southwest Airlines failed to help her switch flights at Nashville, Tenn.,); and, ahead of Christmas 2013, she ended up in Pittsburgh instead of Fort Myers, Fla., under similar circumstances — despite wearing an index card to show to airline staff.
10-hour odyssey
Lamenda Kingdon, 62, of Plymouth, England, was wondering why her supposed two-hour flight from London to the historic Spanish city of Granada was taking so long. She flagged down an air steward — only to be told she was on a 10-hour odyssey headed to the holiday island of Grenada. The 62-year-old booked her fall 2013 trip through a travel agent who clearly needed to brush up on their spelling and geography skills.
WATCH: Why You Really Should Pay Attention to Airport Codes
Wrong way
The same complication over the “e” and “a” in the destinations Grenada and Granada spelled disaster for Bethesda, Md., dentist Edward Gamson in October 2013. Gamson and his partner only realized they were traveling to the West Indies and not Granada from London when they glanced at an in-flight map. “Why are we headed west when we’re going to Spain?” Gamson asked an attendant. The dentist is now suing British Airways for sending him 4,000 miles in the wrong direction.
Wrong continent
LA couple Sandy Valdivieso and Triet Vo overshot their chosen destination by a mind-boggling 7,000 miles after Turkish Airlines messed up the airport codes for the similar-sounding cities of Dakar, capital of the West African country Senegal, and Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh in Asia. The unfortunate pair wound up on the wrong continent in early 2012.
Related: What to Do When Everything Goes Wrong While Traveling (A Survival Guide)
Nine-hour ordeal
A simple four-hour trip turned into an epic nine-hour ordealfor a young girl who was traveling from Nashville to New York City for the holidays in 2011. Nine-year-old Chloe Boyce was taken off the plane because of bad weather when it made a pit stop in Baltimore — but nobody at Southwest Airlines contacted her family. “[It] was the worst day of my life,” recalled Chloe’s mom, Elena Kerr, who was only alerted to the problem when she got a call from Chloe’s aunt, who was supposed to pick her up at LaGuardia.
Scary honeymoon
Newlywed World Cup fans Orin and Melissa van Lingen of Darwin, Australia, had planned to spend their honeymoon in the Brazilian city of Salvador so they could watch Spain versus the Netherlands in a June 2014 match. Instead, their travel agent booked them a flight to crime-ridden San Salvador, El Salvador. The duo only realized the mistake after boarding their connecting flight in Los Angeles.
Doggone it!
It’s not just passengers of the human variety who fall victim to the incompetence of airlines. In March 2013, Hendrix, an unaccompanied 6-year-old English springer spaniel, ended up in Ireland instead of Phoenix, Ariz., where he was to be reunited with his owner after being placed on the wrong flight at Newark by United Airlines.
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