A couple who planned to fly from Los Angeles to Dakar, Senegal, found themselves 7,000 miles away in Dhaka in Bangladesh after an airline mixed up their flight.
Sandy Valdiviseo and her husband Triet Vo intended to take a Turkish Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Dakar but an airport code mix-up saw the couple sent to the wrong continent.
The airport code for Dakar is DKR, while the code for Dhaka is DAC. The couple flew from Los Angeles to Istanbul and had a four hour stopover.
They then boarded a plane for the final leg of their journey and did not realise anything was amiss.
“When the flight attendant said we were heading to Dhaka, we believed that this was how you pronounced Dakar with a Turkish accent,” Valdivieso told the Los Angeles Times.
They only realised when they saw a map of the flight’s route in the air that they were on their way to Bangladesh instead of Senegal.
After arriving in Bangladesh, it took nine hours for the couple to secure flights to Senegal.
The carrier insisted on listening to a phone recording of Valdivieso booking the flight to Dakar before they admitted they had put wrong airport code had been put on their tickets.
Turkish Airlines flew the pair back to Istanbul, where they caught a plane to Dakar. There was no extra charge for the flight from Bangladesh.
The couple’s luggage which also travelled to Bangladesh arrived in Senegal two more days later. The couple have battled for four months to receive compensation from the airline over the incident.
They have since been offered two free tickets to anywhere on the Turkish Airlines’ network.
“We are very, very sorry that this happened,” an airline spokesperson said.
Source: The Daily Star
Stupid airlines staff and a dumb couple! :))