Cathay Boy

I don't know how any of you can defend the airline here. This is like eating at a restaurant and got served rotten food, you ate it, got sick, and people telling you it's your own fault because you should of caught the fact that the food was rotten, but you didn't check the food beforehand and ate it, so it's your fault no the restaurants.

Everyday pax shouldn't be expected to know the airport codes of their destinations. When you buy the ticket you expect the airlines to know what they are doing and deliver you there, the burden is not on the pax to double-check everything, from city name to airport code. The burden is on the airline to make sure the pax go where they have bought the ticket to go.

AA_EXP09

Nor was History.
In HIGH SCHOOL history you already have to know where places in order to write about them to get above a 4.
(IB HL Nov 1997, it still looks similar now.)
(Unless one got past this by regurgitating information similar to Biology and didn't actually learn anything, and even then, in the HI...)

AA_EXP09

Not really-When Brits say 'Paris' I can still hear the R.
Even 'Vancouver' in other languages (Cantonese/Mandarin) tends to be literally translated and it makes a 'h' sound at the end of the last syllable (wungowah/wengehua) (and this is from HK where English is an official language.)

jackal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_...rhotic_accents

FWIW, rhotic accents were actually the original accents, and non-rhotic accents developed from them. According to some linguistic sources I've read, the British accent of the American revolutionary era (always portrayed in movies with a variety of modern-day accents of England) was actually much closer to modern-day American than the modern-day RP accent.

iamaho

Everyday passengers may not know the Airport codes, but they certainly need to know the proper spelling of their destination city! It's Dakar not Dhaka! I see a difference, do you?

Some might argue that Senegal is a French speaking country, so the spelling is different. http://www.villededakar.org/

English spelling of Dakar: Dakar
French spelling of Dakar: Dakar
Turkish spelling of Dakar: Dakar

"The burden is not on the pax to double-check everything, from city name to airport code." <-- Wow... really? So what is the passenger responsible for?

UncleDude

This is a very old story has been happening for over 40 years..likely many times a year with Dakar/Dhaka

However understand the even bigger culprits are Panama City FL versus Panama City in Panama, and Rochester NY versus Rochester MN..in this case it does not help that they both call themselves Rochester International Airport albeit that the NY one has Greater in front of its name.

Hanoian

The same Dhaka/Dakar ticketing mix-up also happened to my first boss, twenty-five years ago. He must have had a paper ticket with the name of the city spelt out in full, so it was clearly (mostly) his fault. But he did at least notice before getting on the plane at LHR that most of his fellow passengers looked South Asian, not African. A quick check with the gate staff confirmed the error - and he got it sorted out with minimal drama. The crucial difference is that he noticed before boarding.

AlwaysFlyStar

This analogy only works if this meal cost thousands of dollars, was ordered months in advance, would take several days to eat, you got a receipt that said you were getting rotten food, and then the restaurant having signs stating that they serve rotten food, and then your waiter confirms they will be bringing you rotten food, and then brings over food that is covered in mould with a foul odour. And yes, if you ignored all of the very clear signs, then you need to take responsibility for your mistake.

Mountain Explorer

Well said!

B747-437B

Why would a Pakistani visa be required for a flight to Bangladesh (or Senegal for that matter)?

NYTA

There was a play about this called "Valparaiso" about a guy who becomes famous for flying to Valparaiso Chile, instead of Valparaiso, Indiana. I saw it in Chicago 14 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valparaiso_%28play%29

"The play, which incorporates live performance with video projection, looks at how the media has affected modern mankind. The central character, Michael Majeski, tries desperately to establish his own identity by throwing himself under the spotlight of celebrity. The piece is composed entirely of interviews, for a range of different media, and culminates in the protagonist committing assisted suicide with a microphone lead on a TV talk show."

c2h

How could they have arrived in Dhaka, Wouldn't they need a Bangladeshi visa before boarding? If they did have the visa then they did know they were going to Dhaka isntead of Dakar.

B747-437B

US Citizens can get a 30-day visa on arrival in Bangladesh, so the lack of visa endorsed in their passports would not be something that would have prevented their embarkation.

B747-437B

More recently (~5 years ago), I had a Bangladeshi show up to check-in at Gatwick presuming he was on his way home, but was instead holding a ticket to Dakar via Accra. He wasn't particularly well educated or well traveled, so the mix-up was somewhat understandable. Ticket had been purchased via an ethnic travel agent in Croydon. Fortunately for him, we did catch the error before he actually got on a plane though!

CAlex

Even if TK screwed up at time of ticketing, when you board a flight to go to an exotic place or a developing country, you check every code in that ticket. I believe it is 100% their issue, even if TK would have screwed-up at the booking process. Maybe that's why TK facilitated to get them to the right place for free, but the fact remains, they do come across as morons!

Best fun I had with similar situation was 2-3 years ago when a colleague (big US Executive) who was raised in the good-all US education system was calling furiously at midnight why his car pickup was not there at the airport (in Bucharest - OTP). Executive driver was of course there, and took us more than 15 minutes on the phone with the stupid traveler to realize that the setting he was describing did not match with my knowledge of the home airport. The penny dropped when I heard Hungarian being spoken in the background; took deep breath and asked that he checks the arrival board to validate the time of arrival of his flight to BUCHAREST, not BUDAPEST. I would have given anything to see the guy's face, when he realized the difference and his error.

He showed-up second day in Bucharest office and apologized profoundly for his tone over the phone and for the whole screw-up. We had already exhausted our laughs . Needless to say, he was a lamb for the rest of the trip.