Man Books Flight for Australian Vacation, One Look Out Plane Window and He Knows He Made a Mistake
A New York man’s dream of an Australian vacation hit a massive snag last week when he realized he had booked his flight to a completely different location.
Kingsley Burnett was going on a cruise departing from Sydney, Australia. That was the plan, anyway.
Where he actually went was Sidney, Montana.
According to KTVQ-TV, Burnett figured out he had a real problem when he looked out his plane window only to see a snow-topped mountain.
“At that point, I knew I was in trouble,” he said.
He landed in Billings, Montana, where he was supposed to hop on a jet to get to Sidney.
Apparently, the difference between booking a flight from New York to Australia and New York to Montana is microscopic, at least when looking at the abbreviations of those locations.
“It’s a matter of acronyms. The S-Y-D as opposed to S-D-Y. Somebody has to fix that,” Burnett said. According to KTVQ, SYD is Sydney and SDY is Sidney.
Burnett said he was focused on saving money and should have paid more attention to the final destination of the flight. His small error accounted for a difference of a little over 8,500 miles.
Instead of hopping on the next leg of his trip to the wrong location, Burnett went to seek help.
Fortunately, the ordeal had a relatively happy ending. American Airlines employee Carol Castellano was able to get him back on track.
“For Carol, it was not a paycheck,” Burnett said. “It was a human being she was dealing with.”
First, the two determined that no available flight would get Burnett to Sydney in time for him to make his cruise.
Castellano then helped him get a flight home and a hotel room for the night, and Burnett was able to reschedule his cruise for June.
“Montana didn’t have kangaroos. It had Carol. And that was good enough for me,” Burnett said.
Apparently, this isn’t the first time this has happened.
The manager of the hotel, Shelli Mann, said that “this is the second time we have had a guest who was trying to get to Sydney, Australia,” according to KTVQ.
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