One of the first successes of the Web was on-line travel — the elimination (“disintermediation” was the term during the Bubble Years) of the travel agent, allowing you to book your own travel. I do this every week, though not always perfectly. There have been a few times when I booked a room on the wrong day — clicking next Wednesday instead of this Wednesday on the little pop-up calendar — but nothing quite as monumental as reported in this Reuters’ story.
A 21-year-old German tourist used the Web to book a flight from Berlin to Sydney, Australia to see his girlfriend. Unfortunately, he typed in SDY for his destination, rather than SYD. SDY is the 3-letter code for Sidney-Richland Municipal Airport in Sidney, Montana. Dressed for Australian summer, he stepped off the plane in northeastern Montana winter in a t-shirt and shorts. He spent 3 days in Billings, MT before he could buy a ticket from SDY to SYD with money wired from Germany. The final line in the story is this quote from his mother — “I didn’t notice the mistake as my son is usually good with computers”
3 comments on “Those 3-Letter Codes Are Important”
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This brought back memories of a recent experience. I made $600 worth of non-refundable hotel reservations about a month before the trip, then the next day received a very friendly email message welcoming me to the hotel stay – THAT DAY. I freaked, then immediately called the hotel, explained that my trip was not for 4 weeks, and that I couldn’t explain the date error. After some conversation, they agreed not to charge me the no-show fee, even though they had a technical right to do so.
After some subsequent reflection, I think what happened was this: I had the correct dates highlighted in the pop-up calendar, then decided I should log in so the reservation would populate from my profile. When I then returned to the reservation, the calendar dates had cleared to the default of “tomorrow” and somehow in the next series of confirmation screens I missed my mistake.
It could have cost me a lot for not carefully checking the reservation. Lesson learned.
Anyway, keep up the great podcasts – I really look forward to them and I give you a plug from time to time on my site.
I’ve also made that mistake booking airline flights on-line. Luckily, most airlines seem to have implemented a 24-hour cancellation rule — if you call them within 24 hours of pressing the “Buy Now” button and tell them you made a mistake, they’ll cancel the ticket without a charge.
Thanks for the plugs on your blog. I’ve added your <i><a href=”http://travelsecurity.blogspot.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Travel Security</a></i> site to the TravelCommon’s blog roll. You do a nice job of reporting the latest TSA madness.
This story emphasises the value and importance of people in the process.
This evening I tried to book a stay at a Courtyard Marriott hotel through the web site. It failed twice and so I decided to call the 1-888 number and speak to a human. The lady I spoke to was polite and helpful and got the rate quoted on the web site for the entire stay.
Not being able to book the room would be irritating and not being able to get the good rate would have been costly. Employing someone friendly and competent really did turn a frustrating experience into a pleasant one.