Man booked trip of lifetime to Australia but ended up at wrong destination
A holidaymaker missed the trip of a lifetime in Australia after ending up in the wrong Sydney.
Kingsley Burnett, from New York, US had been looking forward to a slice of Southern Hemisphere sun and soaking up all the sights Oz has to offer from a cruise he had booked.
The 62-year-old hopped on a flight and had no idea anything was wrong until he landed.
Instead of iconic scenes including the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, Kingsley was met with snow capped mountains and icy temperatures of just 2C.
It turned out Kingsley had booked and caught a flight to the tiny town of Sidney in the US state of Montana, which has less than 7,000 residents and a significantly different temperature to the Australian city.
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“I saw a mountaintop covered in white snow. At that point, I knew I was in trouble,” Mr Burnett told local TV station KTVQ.
The view Kingsley was expecting to drink in (Getty Images)“It's a matter of acronyms. The S-Y-D as opposed to S-D-Y. Somebody has to fix that."
Kingsley said he hadn't noticed the price difference as he was travelling on a tight budget and thought he had landed a bargain ticket to the other side of the world.
The two similarly named cities are separated by seven time zones.
Flights to Sidney, Montana from New York still require a connection and can take between nine and 25 hours, which helps to explain how Kingsley didn't realise the mistake until he arrived.
The disgruntled holidaymaker stayed in a hotel, where a manager explained that the Sidney/Sydney mixup was more common than expected.
“This is the second time we've had a guest that was trying to get to Sydney, Australia,” manager Sheila Mann said.
Kingsley managed to get on a plane back to New York thanks to Carol Castellano of American Airlines.
While he has now rescheduled his once-in-a-lifetime trip for June, he says he will now focus on making sure his final destination is correct, rather than on getting the best value for money.
Accidentally flying to the wrong place is not a common mistake, but it is one which does occasionally happen.
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Last year a couple of confused travellers were left stranded after trying to get back to the UK following a trip to France - and somehow ending up in Spain.
Elise and Jessy thought they'd boarded a flight back to London Stansted (SWNS)
The couple's plane ticket (SWNS)Elise Mallia, 33, and Jessy Jezequel, 41, found themselves 800 miles away from their home destination after trying to fly back from Marseille.
The pair had made a whistle stop tour of the port town to watch a football match against Nice - but ended up unexpectedly extending their trip with a little journey to the Spanish capital of Madrid.
It wasn't until the couple were making their descent into Madrid that they realised the mix-up.
Elise, an estate agent from Fulham, said: "An hour into our flight, Jesse said he thought he heard a flight attendant say Madrid, but we thought he had dreamed it.
"But after that we started realising all the flight attendants were speaking Spanish.
"When we asked, they told us we were going to Madrid - and we had no idea how that was possible."
She added they'd had their boarding passes scanned three times before boarding the flight and assumed they must have been wrong - but when they checked, they weren't.
"We were baffled and so were the flight attendants," she said. "We got home in the end, but we still have no idea how it happened. It's not like getting the wrong bus - we literally ended up in a different country!"
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