Student's Ticket Mix-Up: Off to Canada Instead of Australia

Milan Shipper, a Dutch student, really wanted to visit Sydney, Australia. Flights from Europe to Australia are quite costly. So when Shipper came across a flight to Sydney online for less than eight hundred euros, he booked it without thinking twice. There was just one problem: the tickets

were for Sydney...in Canada.

When did Shipper realize his mistake? Only when the plane was about to land in Sydney, Canada. "I was already in Toronto and the connecting flight was really small, and I wondered: Can this plane fly all the way to Australia?" he recounts. He started checking the monitors on the plane and discovered: He wasn't on an international flight continuing to Australia, but rather a short domestic flight.

"Only then I realized there was another Sydney in the world," he says regretfully.

Shipper is apparently not the most flexible traveler. After landing in the Canadian Sydney, he spent just five hours there before boarding a flight back to the Netherlands. He had no interest in visiting any Sydney other than the one in Australia.

Not that he'll be visiting Australia anytime soon. The airline, after hearing his story, generously offered him free tickets to the "real" Sydney he dreamed of, but for now, he's sadly declining the offer. "My classes are starting soon and I need to work," he says. "Maybe another time."