US couple sent wrong city not Dakar (DKR), but it say Dhaka (DAC) on TK
May 20, 2013, 2:54 pm
#31
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A journalist's definition of "experienced travelers" may mean someone who has been on an airplane at least twice or who has a passport. TK clearly did what they could to fix this.
May 20, 2013, 3:03 pm
#32
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Show me the way to Amarillo?
I would also throw in language as a side issue, maybe spanish and vietnamese speakers by the names.
May 20, 2013, 3:18 pm
#33
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May 20, 2013, 3:44 pm
#35
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One can argue all sides of the blame game (although my 50 cents says more than 50% of the ultimate mess is with the passengers); however, Turkish treated them incredibly well. It flew them for free to their correct destination. That's amazing customer service in my opinion. How can they expect additional compensation?!
May 20, 2013, 4:33 pm
#36
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One can argue all sides of the blame game (although my 50 cents says more than 50% of the ultimate mess is with the passengers); however, Turkish treated them incredibly well. It flew them for free to their correct destination. That's amazing customer service in my opinion. How can they expect additional compensation?!
May 20, 2013, 4:58 pm
#38
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Just like Fayetteville in land of USA
I had almost similar issue with Fayetteville (for those who don't know there are 3 states with the same city name which are AR, GA, and NC) which I wanted to fly to formerly FYV now recode XNA Arkansas. I remembered I mentioned clearly to ticketing agent at that time - city and state, I wanted to fly from SMF to FYV via MEM on former NWA and now DAL, paid and got my ticket but as I was walking away, lucky me, I was going through the ticket to ensure my name, FF number was on the ticket and to my horror, the airport code was FAY and not FYV. So when back to the same ticketing agent, calmly and sorted it out amicably with no additional costs. End of story, always check and recheck your ticket. God, I won't want to be in the wrong place and someone is waiting for you at the other airport.
May 20, 2013, 5:28 pm
#39
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What is the first thing you do when you get off a plane of you have a connection? You go to the monitors to see if your flight is on time and what gate it will be departing from. Assuming, that the schedule is as it is now, the flight to Dakar, (which, by the way, has a tech stop in Mauritania) leaves at 13:45, while the flight to Dhaka leaves at 18:20. I honestly wonder if these people did it on purpose because they were in IST for FOUR HOURS without ever once checking the monitors! Experience or not, anybody is going to look at the monitors to see what is going on with their flight, because they need to know which gate to get to. (Would any gate info be printed on their BP they got in LAX? Because even if there was, surely it would be subject to change that far in advance.) But no, I refuse to believe that they could honestly be ignorant enough to never check a screen for flight info, or see the sign at their boarding gate. And considering TK would have checked for visas, I wonder if they had visas for Pakistan, because I can't imagine how they would have been allowed on the flight otherwise. Maybe I'm being too skeptical, but this just smells rotten. I've flown TK to PEK several times, and they always check for visas.
May 20, 2013, 5:32 pm
#40
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Let's all take a deep breath. Despite all sorts of risk mitigation, the chances of something bad happening are never zero. The percentage of passengers who arrive at the correct destination is far greater than the percentage of bags, but as we learned here, it's not quite 100%. It's a shame it took so long for this to get resolved, but the outcome seems reasonable. Both parties could have done a little better, and both parties had to give up something, time or money. All's well that ends well.
May 20, 2013, 5:37 pm
#41
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The victim in this matter is TK!
They were more than accommodating to the passengers by flying them to their destination for free, despite the passengers' refusal to own up to any responsibility on their part.
And now TK gets bad publicity because these passengers went to the media, and to get additional compensation!
They were more than accommodating to the passengers by flying them to their destination for free, despite the passengers' refusal to own up to any responsibility on their part.
And now TK gets bad publicity because these passengers went to the media, and to get additional compensation!
May 20, 2013, 5:50 pm
#42
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OT: In the days before GPS, I was filling my car up. A truck driver walks over and asks anyone if they know where a specific address near Aberdeen, MD. No one recognizes it. The pump attendant asked to look at the manifest.....the letters were smudged. He should have been in MO not MD..... Oops
There should really be an exhaustive list of these somewhere, but here are a few other easily-confused ones, mostly from the start of the alphabet...
CAK (Akron/Canton, OH) vs. CAN (Guangzhou, China nee Canton)
ALB (Albany, NY) vs. ABY (Albany, GA)
AEX (Alexandria, LA) vs. HBE (Alexandria, Egypt) vs. ALY (Alexandria, Egypt)
AGS (Augusta, GA) vs. AUG (Augusta, ME)
BCN (Barcelona, Spain) vs. BLA (Barcelona, Venezuela)
ZBF (Bathurst, NB, CA) vs. BHS (Bathurst, NSW, AU) vs. BRT (Bathurst Island, NT, AU)
BHM (Birmingham, AL) vs. BHX (Birmingham, England)
BRS (Bristol, England) vs. TRI (Bristol, TN)
BRL (Burlington, IA) vs. BTV (Burlington, VT)
CCU (Calcutta, India) vs. CCJ (Calicut, India) - over 1,000 miles apart
CBG (Cambridge, England) vs. YCB (Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, CA)
CPV (Campina Grande, Brazil) vs. CPQ (Campinas, Brazil)
CLD (Carlsbad, CA) vs. CNM (Carlsbad, NM)
SJC (San Jose, CA) vs. SJO (San Jose, Costa Rica)
Products of American geography classes might have trouble keeping BUD (Budapest) and OTP (Bucharest) straight, too.
Unfortunately, BYU (Beyreuth, Germany) no longer has service, and is thus harder to confuse with BEY (Beirut, Lebanon), and BMG (Bloomington, IN) lacks service, although BMI (Bloomington, IL) still has it. And fortunately, Tehran's airport usually shows up as Tehran these days, not Ahmadabad, so folks trying to get to Ahmedabad, India don't end up there instead.
May 20, 2013, 5:57 pm
#43
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One item from the article also sticks out to me as odd....they indicated falling asleep for 7 hours and then noticing they were over the Middle East. The flight is roughly 8 1/2 hours so that should put them somewhere over India around that time frame. Not a major issue, but their story does not add up.
May 20, 2013, 5:59 pm
#44
Join Date: May 2011
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These people had multiple opportunities to catch their mistake. If they cannot even bother checking the destination sign at the boarding gate, as well as getting on a plane filled with Bangladeshis instead of Africans... Then they are hardly experienced travellers.
It's not boarding the wrong subway train going in the wrong direction where it is a simple mistake. There were multiple opportunities for these people.
It's not boarding the wrong subway train going in the wrong direction where it is a simple mistake. There were multiple opportunities for these people.
Odds are this was the first time they went somewhere unfamiliar that had such a similar name to somewhere else unfamiliar. People keep going on about how they "must have seen the destination written down at some point" but that doesn't mean they didn't check it. Maybe they thought Dhaka was Dakar.
And for the second time, them making a mistake does not erase their travel history. Not everyone can be quite as perfect as you evidently are... I'm sure the person who took their booking was also experienced in their job, but they obviously made a mistake. It's what humans do...
May 20, 2013, 6:16 pm
#45
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+1 Callum! This is compounded by the facts that: 1. Natives of most Anglophone countries other than Canada & parts of USA do not pronounce an R after a vowel, & 2. Most people have no clue on how to pronounce "DH," which AFAIK is correctly pronounced like the TH in English "THe" or "THis" or "THat." So most Brits would probably pronounce both as DAH-KAHH! Finally, many foreign cities have slightly different names in English than in their own languages: Munchen (with a double-dotted U called an Umlaut) = Munich, Warszawa = Warsaw (Poland,) Moskva = Moscow, Bucuresti = Bucharest, Goteborg (with the O slashed) = Gothenburg (Sweden.)