He's not writing a Trip Report
 

Man was sent by BA to Grenada instead of Granada. Maybe now people will be more careful when they spell the name of a countree.


http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2014/0...enada-instead/

There's another current thread about this

Reminds me of the young man who tried to fly to Oakland. California and ended up in Auckland, New Zealand. Always felt mildly suspicious about that one.

$4500 to fly London to Spain, the man's a fool though I understand American dentists are used to overcharging :-)

Sorry Dukey, I missed it. But I have seen people on these boards write Grenada for Granada and Manhatten for Manhattan.

Actually, the man is not a fool, it was British Airways' mistake--BA admitted the error, but refused to properly compensate the fellow for the incomprehensible aggravation he was put through.

But it's always easier to assume the American screwed up, isn't it?

Don't miind his nationality but $4500 when cheepo flights are in the region of E45 is just nuts :-)

Didn't he notice the notices at the gate?

Grenada is the island Reagan invaded to free medical students who could not get onto American universities. Maybe it was a nostalgic trip?

We were on a flight to South America when a woman was taken off at the last minute when she realized she was headed the wrong way. Can't remember the particulars, but it would have been spectacular.

We were once flying to Chicago and a woman asked, "Is this going to O'Hara?"

Two people said yes and corrected her that it was pronounced O'Hare. She persisted on calling it on O'Hara, so everyone ignored her.

<Didn't he notice the notices at the gate? >

I wondered at that, too. But he said he saw only the airport code at the gate and failed to recognize it. (I think I would know my destination airport code, but would everyone?)

His e-ticket did not have the destination printed on it.

BA confirms his recitation of these facts.

It was a first class ticket.. dream trip. With that itinerary.. USA-GRENADA- return from LISBON to USA.. the $$ amount not surprising.

I have a friend who rushed through Schipol to make a tight connection to Boston. She shouted out her flight number to staff as she ran, and they encouraged her on.

Finally, she got to the gate and was bundled down the jetway and seated. As the plane backed out, she heard. Voice saying. "Welcome aboard South African Airways flight XX to Johannesberg"

Fortunately, they were close enough just to pull back and let her off. But she missed the Boston flight.

<<BA confirms his recitation of these facts.>> Where?

There was a case in the UK recently of a family who thought they were really clever to have bought tickets to Orlando for next to nothing. When they arrived at Birmingham airport they realised the tickets were from Birmingham, Alabama not Birmingham, England.

We never fly without knowing the airport codes of all the cities on our itinerary. I recheck the Airport code and flight number before we get on the flight. BA might have made the error but think he was pretty naive and trusting to not even look up the airport code for the city he was planning to visit. I also usually see a sign at the gate with the name of the city and the country, unless in the USA going to another big city in the USA. We have friends who were going to the Mayo Clinic in MN and they made reservations to Rochester, N.Y. They hadn't even bothered to find out that Mayo is in Rochester, MN. A little research by the traveler goes a long way.

Lots of people do not care about airport codes. it's only when you book your tickets yourself that you might even deal with that. They used a travel agency since they obviously weren't comfortable doing it themselves or didn´t have the time.

"A little research by the traveler goes a long way." Amen! And a bit more research can take the traveler much further...

I don't believe that the gate only had the 3 letter code displayed. I've flown to the Caribbean including Grenada 100s of times from Gatwick and have never seen an airport code displayed by itself on the info boards or at the gate. It would have had both Grenada and St Lucia displayed as the destinations. As for an e-ticket without a destination, don't believe that either. When I book with BA, I get so many emails at various stages with the info. Booking errors occur all the time for various reasons, but I can't see how you can make it to the plane and only when you see the flight map notice you are on the wrong flight.

You don't need airport codes to make the booking online. If you care to look at the BA website, it has autocomplete in the from and to boxes. You don't even need to be able to spell more than the first couple characters.

<<They used a travel agency>> The Fox article states they used an airline booking agent.

Trying to escape JFK in a snow storm the very helpful desk agent told us if we rushed to LaGuardia we could make the flight to Portland and drive ourselves back to Seattle. Always up for an adventure that doesn't include sleeping in the airport, we made a mad taxi dash to LaGuardia just in time to make the flight to Portland . . . Maine! That would have made for a much longer drive than we anticipated! It ended up being cancelled as well and we still had to sleep in the airport.