Wound Up In Bangladesh When They Thought The Were Traveling To Africa

A Los Angeles couple who thought the were on their way to an exotic African vacation found themselves 7,000 miles from their intended destination after Turkish Airlines mixed up their bookings and placed them on the wrong airplane.

And it all came down to a three letter airport code, according to the travel site Gadling. Triet Vo and his wife Sandy Valdivieso had intended to fly from L.A. to Dakar in Africa. Instead, they wound up on a flight to Dhaka in Bangladesh. The airline representative had entered DAC on the luggage tags rather than DKR in the computer system.

The couple made it as far as Istanbul, where the boarded a flight they thought would take them to Dakar. When the flight attendant said the plane was going to Dhaka, they assumed it was "Dakar" pronounced in a Turkish accent, the couple told the LA Times. They didn't realize their mistake until they saw they were over the Middle East on a route map displayed on the plane.

It took a while, but the couple convinced the airline that they had requested a flight to Africa rather than Bangladesh. They were eventually flown to their intended destination at the airline's expense.

(Image from file)

FMI: www.turkishairlines.com