Guyana not Goiania: Flight mix-up sends air traveller to wrong country

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This was published 9 years ago

Guyana not Goiania: Flight mix-up sends air traveller to wrong country

By Oliver Smith
Georgetown, Guyana is approximately 14 hours by plane from Goiania, in Brazil.

Georgetown, Guyana is approximately 14 hours by plane from Goiania, in Brazil.Credit: Google Maps

A medical student was left red-faced after he attempted to fly to Guyana to begin a scholarship but ended up almost 2000 miles (3218.7km) from his intended destination.

CNN reports that Emmanuel Akomanyi, from Ghana, could not find a direct flight to Georgetown, the capital of the South American country. He was, however, able to book what he thought was an indirect service via Sao Paulo.

But when he disembarked the plane he found himself not in Guyana, but the Brazilian city of Goiania.

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Akomanyi spent a week in Brazil, according to CNN, where he was supported by strangers as he had no funds. The airline that sold him the original ticket eventually flew him to his intended destination.

It's certainly not the first time a pair of similar sounding place names have led to travel mishaps.

In 2013 Lamenda Kingdon, a British woman, had hoped to explore the beautiful Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain. Instead she mistakenly caught a flight across the Atlantic to the tropical Caribbean island of Grenada.

Earlier that year Sandy Valdiviseo and her husband Triet Vo were intending to fly from Los Angeles to Dakar in Senegal with Turkish Airlines. However, instead they ended up almost 7000 miles (11,265 km) away – on an entirely different continent – in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, after the airport codes were mixed up.

In 2009, Samantha Lazzaris had planned to visit San Jose in Costa Rica but was mistakenly sent by her travel agent, Thomas Cook, to San Juan in Puerto Rico.

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And in 2002, Emma Nunn and her boyfriend Raoul Sebastian thought they were on their way to a three-week holiday in Australia when they landed at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and were transferred to a 25-seat propeller plane. Unpeturbed, they boarded, only to find themselves in Sydney, Canada, a small town on Cape Breton Island described by one local resident as "probably one of the last places in Canada that you would go to for any reason whatsoever".

Destinations that have caused air travel mix-ups

Guyana and Goianaia, Brazil

Grenada, Spain and Granada

Dakar, Senegal and Dhaka, Bangladesh

San Jose, Costa Rica and San Jose, Puerto Rico

Stamford Bridge, Yorkshire and Stamford Bridge Football Ground, London

Sydney, Canada and Sydney, Australia

Lebanon, New Hampshire and Lebanon

Oakland, California and Auckland, New Zealand

La Paz, Bolivia and La Paz, Mexico

Antigua, Guatemala and Antigua

Lisburn, Northern Ireland and Lisbon, Portugal

Santiago, Chile and San Diego, USA

Stratford-Upon-Avon and Stratford, London

Turkey and Torquay

The Telegraph, London

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