p.s. "Heard the GA boarding announcement?
7. Heard the FA and ground crew repeated onboard announcements"? The 19-year-old Serbian probably speaks several languages; however, how on earth is she supposed to understand the garbled noise coming from the speakers or the crew muttering into the plane PA microphone?!
But I bet she never assumes that a ticket to Brisbane means Australia (not Florida) again!

Yes, this reminds me of the time I flew with my wife to Brazil, but the travel agent who had made the booking failed to realize that our visas were set to expire the day before we arrived.

Luckily, we were able to pull some strings to get in (connections sure come in handy sometimes), but I was ready to call my lawyer to initiate action against the travel agent during those 4 hours before we were allowed to leave the airport.

I'm an agent and sent someone to the wrong Springfield one time. I just assumed which one he wanted based on travel patterns. My bad. I refunded him.
Have made a few other mistakes over the years, but I aways make it right and refund or do whatever necessary to keep my client satisfied if possible.
Agents are human too, but I think we have a better track record overall than the general public booking online. Just had an aquaintance book and pay for a flight online, and then checked in for it at SJO, but the ticket was booked from SJC.

Alright people, listen up - the OP is not tennis player Bojana Jovanovski, the person to whom this actually happened (linked by 9Benua in post #6 in this thread). And I'd give the 19 year old Serbian a little slack for 1) trusting her travel agent and 2) not being terribly familiar with US geography. I'd be worn out, too, after flying IAD-DAL-ABQ-CNM. I imagine she would have flown CNM-ABQ-SAN to get to the right Carlsbad.

Still curious.. 53rd in the world for what..

I think both TA and passenger share some responsibility.. a little gesture from the TA is in order I think..

I would say 50/50

You should always double-check no matter what.

As a travel agent, I would myself feel some responsibility but there would be several questions.

1) What information was the travel agent given? Was it clear the traveler was supposed to go to California? If not, the agent probably should have asked, but see #2 below.

2) Our agency uses Sabre, the most widely used computer booking system among travel agents world wide. Out of curiosity, I requested the three letter city code for "Carlsbad". In most cases where there are multiple cities with the same name, the computer lists them all. In the case of "Carlsbad", only the New Mexico city code (CNM) appeared. I went back and even put in "Carlsbad, CA". Again only the NMex city code appeared. I happen to have a client who flies to Carlsbad, CA regularly, so I know the code. When I put in the CA code and asked for the city, it came up "San Diego/Carlsbad". So without knowing for sure that the person needed to go to CA, it is easy to see how mistake got made.

3) Since the traveler got to her destination before the match started, it is hard to put a $ amount on the liability. There is no assurance, of course, that she would have won the match, even if the flight arrangements were correct, and she did not have to pay to get the mistake corrected.

I agree that there is a level of responsibility for the traveler to check her flight information, and she had numerous opportunities to do so, but I do think a good agent would have been more careful.

OP's question is whether the TA is liable. Nothing on these facts suggests liability. Whether the TA chooses to issue a refund as a matter of CS is a different matter.

Since she's a professional tennis player, I'd say tennis

Reading through the thread.. sorry.. must have missed that..

It is in the article linked in 9Benua's post:

Thanks for the info. I will be real careful in future and will double check flight details.

I thought the link was about another situation, not the OP..

Thanks for the clarification..

I was in a class in Redmond, WA a few years ago. Late in the first day, a couple of guys came in, 5 hours late. They had flown to Redmond, Oregon rather than to SEA and shuttled to Redmond Washington. Big red faces. I think that they had rented a car and drove up to the class.

EntropyM, welcome to FT!

I hope they weren't flying Alaska Airlines. If so they probably would have connected through SEA to get to RDM.