It was a tale of two Sydneys.
A Latest York man’s dreams of an idyllic Australian getaway crashed and burned spectacularly after a gross misunderstanding resulted in him flying to Montana as an alternative.
“I saw the little plane with like 9 passengers and wondered ‘how is that going to get me to Australia.’” Kingsley Burnett, 62, told The Post. “That was once I caught onto the error I made.”
The Latest Yorker, who originally hails from Jamaica, had reportedly planned on flying from La Guardia to Australia, where he was slated to take a cruise departing from the nice and cozy Down Under metropolis of Sydney, KTVQ reported.
He realized things had gone horribly awry when he landed in Billings and saw snow and a small Cape Air Jet waiting to fly him to Sidney, Montana.
For reference, Sidney boasts just over 6,000 people while Sydney’s population is 5.3. million.
His epic travel gaffe was subsequently confirmed by the gate agent in Billings.
Burnett said he had gotten confused by the airport codes while booking the flight.
“It’s a matter of acronyms. The S-Y-D versus S-D-Y. Anyone has to repair that,” he insisted, referring to Sydney and Sidney’s respective abbreviations.
It might sound odd that the traveler wasn’t tipped off by the huge price differential. Nevertheless, Burnett, who was attempting to be frugal along with his vacation planning, said he had just been comfortable to seek out such a “bargain” for a transoceanic flight.
“I believed it was a great deal,” Burnett told the Post while chuckling. “I saw the SDY [Sidney] and the SDY was cheaper than the SYD [Sydney].”With no plans to go to Sydney’s stateside homophone, Burnett visited the American Airlines ticket desk in Billings, where an agent named Carol Castellano helped sort out his flight fiasco.
“Kingsley got here, and he goes, ‘I’ve got an issue,’ ” described Castellano, who, upon learning of his plight, realized the Latest Yorker wouldn’t have time to catch his Australian cruise.
So she booked the wayward fellow a return flight to Latest York, in addition to a room on the Boothill Inn where he could spend the night. Interestingly, this wasn’t the primary time that hotel manager Shelli Mann had observed such a mix-up.
“That is the second time we’ve had a guest that was attempting to get to Sydney, Australia,” she said.
Despite by chance flying to the unsuitable hemisphere, Burnett says he’s just grateful that Castellano was in a position to help him out.
“Montana didn’t have kangaroos. It had Carol. And that was adequate for me,” he gushed, noting he rescheduled his Australian trip for June.
Burnett’s not the primary person to fly to the unsuitable Sydney. In 2017, 18-year-old Milan Schipper of Vaassen, Holland, prompted facepalms across the globe after by chance traveling to Sydney, Nova Scotia, as an alternative of the intended Australian destination.
Humans aren’t the one passengers who’ve by chance ended up on the inaccurate continent.
In December, a Tennessee family was flabbergasted when an airline mistakenly sent their Nashville-bound dog halfway internationally to Saudi Arabia.