An airline error caused a couple to be sent to the wrong country. The couple was supposed to fly from Los Angeles to Dakar, Senegal, but they wound up 7,000 miles away in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Sandy Valdivieso and her husband Triet Vo thought everything was fine when they received their Turkish Airlines boarding passes, but a mistake in the airport code sent them to the wrong country. Their passes said they were going from LAX to Istanbul and then to DAC. However DAC is the airport code for Dhaka in Bangladesh and they wanted to go to Dakar, where the airport code is DKR.
The couple didn't think twice about the incorrect airport code.
"I guess we were just going by the flight number on our tickets, and that DAC was printed on them," Valdivieso, 31, an academic counselor at UCLA, told the Los Angeles Times."You just assume that everything is correct."
Valdivieso booked the trip to Dakar for $2,700, but their tickets and luggage tags gad them going to DAC as their final stop.
The couple arrived at Istanbul without any problems and when they boarded their flight to what they thought as Dakar, they didn't realize that they were headed to the wrong country.
"When the flight attendant said we were heading to Dhaka, we believed that this was how you pronounced 'Dakar' with a Turkish accent," Valdivieso told the Times.
The couple fell asleep on board. It wasn't until several hours later that the couple realized that something went wrong. Valdivieso woke up and noticed on the live travel map that they were flying over the Middle East.
When they landed, the couple tried to fix the mistake. It wasn't until nine hours later that Turkish Airlines flew them back to Istanbul. They then had to board the six-hour flight to Dakar. They didn't get their luggage until two days
later.
Fortunately, Turkish Airlines didn't charge the extra for the flights but the couple had been trying to get the airline to compensate them. When the Los Angeles Times contacted the airline, the couple was given two free tickets on any Turkish Airlines flight.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
