Friday, December 29, 2006

Dummy of the year 2006

This one surely tops the bill as the dumbest travel story of the year - the story is great but the traveler, is well, dumb! The girlfriend needs to raise her sights, way higher. It also is worth thinking about the fact the traveler booked the trip online and, had he paid attention, would have seen the error right away. Oh well!
(Reuters) -- A 21-year-old German tourist who wanted to visit his girlfriend in the Australian metropolis Sydney landed 13,000 kilometers (8,077 miles) away near Sidney, Montana, after mistyping his destination on a flight booking Web site. Dressed for the Australian summer in T-shirt and shorts, Tobi Gutt left Germany on Saturday for a four-week holiday.

Instead of arriving "down under", Gutt found himself on a different continent and bound for the chilly state of Montana.

"I did wonder but I didn't want to say anything," Gutt told the Bild newspaper. "I thought to myself, you can fly to Australia via the United States."

Gutt's airline ticket routed him via the U.S. city of Portland, Oregon, to Billings, Montana. Only as he was about to board a commuter flight to Sidney -- an oil town of about 5,000 people -- did he realize his mistake.

The hapless tourist, who had only a thin jacket to keep out the winter cold, spent three days in Billings airport before he was able to buy a new ticket to Australia with 600 euros in cash that his parents and friends sent over from Germany.

"I didn't notice the mistake as my son is usually good with computers," his mother, Sabine, told Reuters.

5 comments:

Willie said...

I doubt the veracity of this story and would be interested to know Reuters' source. Two Montana newspapers (including the Billings Gazette) and the Associated Press have been unable to confirm this story with anyone at the Billings airport. Montana's the kind of place where a guy in shirtsleeves hanging around the airport for three days in the middle of winter would definitely be remembered by anyone who saw him.

Anonymous said...

wouldn't "dumbest" be the correct spelling rather than "dummest"? Who is the dummy?

IAG Blog said...

fair catch! thanks

Anonymous said...

Some more....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2172858.stm

Anonymous said...

Bild is a German-language magazine and obviously Reuters picked up the story from them.