Easily confused airports?
 

Thought of day: what are some easily confused airports?

Once a year or so, some poor people make the news after mistakenly ending up in Sydney, Nova Scotia instead of Sydney, Australia, but I'm thinking of more pedestrian mistakes that could trip up even a not-entirely-clueless traveler, and preferably a bit more interesting than thinking your flight leaves from London-Heathrow instead of London-Gatwick. For example, DFW has flights to both Springfield, MO (SGF) and Springfield, IL (SPI), and there's a San Jose in both California (SJC) and Costa Rica (SJO). Any others?

While I haven't flown in or out of it I was surprised that Ontario International (ONT) is an airport near LA in California not say Toronto in Canada.

For slightly different reasons, Genoa (GOA) and Goa (GOI) are surprisingly easily confused when booking...

Grenada/Granada has tripped a few people up

San Jose, Los Cabos, Mexico. (SJD).

Nanning nng and nanjing nkg.

I know the difference quite well but ctrip's mobile app thought it knew better than me a few months ago and I ended up having to eat one ticket and buy a walkup fare on the flight I actually wanted.

I also have a friend who made the sjc/sjo mistake a few years ago. Fortunately for him, his ticket was full fare so the fix was easy.

Auckland NZ and Oakland CA USA.

Rochester NY and Rochester MN

Portland Maine and Portland Oregon

I haven't heard of confusion between Birmingham Alabama and Birmingham England but it must have happened.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

A Granada/Grenada mix-up was recently reported in the FT BA forum.

Many years ago, I stopped into a travel agency to price a trip from New York City to Las Vegas. I could not understand why the travel agent was only coming up with trips that took 18-24 hours. Then I saw that the agent was searching for NYC-LOS (Lagos, Nigeria), rather than NYC-LAS!

Santiago de Chile (SCL) in Chile and Santiago de Compostela (SCQ) in Spain can confuse.

Easily confused airports?
 

For non native speakers, Dulles and Dallas are confusing.

Unless there is a specific conversational need (e.g. airport pickup) for me to differentiate between BWI, DCA, and IAD, I always refer to Dulles as "Washington DC" not only to my foreign friends, but to people like my mom who wouldn't know or care anyway.

For our Italian friends, Monaco (Monte Carlo) and Munich are easy to mix up, as both are called Monaco in Italian, just with "di Baviera" added on the later.

Fortunately for them, Monaco only has a heliport ;)

Charleston SC (CHS) and Charleston WV (CRW)
Columbus OH (CMH) and Columbus GA (CSG)
Dayton OH (DAY) and Daytona Beach FL (DAB)
Dallas (DAL, DFW) and Washington Dulles (IAD) ... confusion not limited to non-native-English speakers!
Manchester England (MAN) and Manchester NH (MHT)
Saint John NB (YSJ) and St John's NF (YYT)

this certainly isn't an exhaustive list ...

I went to school in Charlottesville, VA (CHO) and often had travel agents (long time ago) book me accidentally to Charlotte (CLT). Valparaiso Indiana (VPZ), and Valparaiso, Chile (VAP) - there was even a play written about a guy who flies to Chile instead of Indiana.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valparaiso_(play)

Tatakoto (TKV), French Polynesia, which DID experience a total solar eclipse in 2010
Takapoto (TKP), French Polynesia, which DID NOT experience a total solar eclipse in 2010

...as allegedly discovered by a European eclipse chaser upon arrival at the latter!