However, instead they ended up almost 7,000 miles away – on an entirely different continent – in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, after the airport codes were mixed up. The airport code for Dakar, the capital of Senegal, is DKR, while the code for the airport in Dhaka, which is the capital of Bangladesh, is DAC.
After arriving in Istanbul, the couple had boarded a connecting flight. It was only after seeing the route map of the flight’s progress, which showed the plane over the Middle East, that they realised the error. “When the flight attendant said we were heading to Dhaka, we believed that this was how you pronounced 'Dakar' with a Turkish accent," Ms Valdivieso said.
When they arrived in Bangladesh, the pair informed Turkish Airlines about the mistake, and tried to arrange a transfer to Senegal. The airline then insisted on tracking down the recording of the initial booking before acknowledging the error and installing the couple on flights to West Africa, 12 hours after their arrival in Bangladesh. Their baggage arrived in Senegal two days after they did. "We are very, very sorry that this happened," a Turkish Airlines spokeswoman said.
2 comments:
I'm sorry, but even after reading the Telegraph article I'm still confused about how this happened.
Normal process:
1) Book flights to destination on a particular flight
2) Go to airport, check in for flight number to destination
3) Get given boarding passes for first and connecting flights (which would all show correct flight numbers)
3) Go to gate for flight number
4) Board plane for flight number
5) Arrive at connecting airport, find gate for connecting flight number
6) Board plane for connecting flight
7) Arrive at destination
The only place in the process that I can think of where the airport code would be used is in the first step where the wrong destination could be booked i.e. an error by the travel agent or airline agent who put in the wrong airport code on the booking.
But surely there is an element of responsibility on the passengers to make sure the tickets/booking documents are correct? Or that the destination is where they want to go when they are checking in at the first airport?
There's more detail in this article ...
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/17/business/la-fi-lazarus-20130517
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