Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

sfgate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 284 posts

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#201

Post by KineticLensman »

orthoxerox wrote: post #190
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't be surprised, a lot of older systems - and the airline industry has a lot of older systems - worked with really tight and compact constraints, for which I'm sure there was a technical reason at the time. I mean if we ever get more than 17576 airports in the world, there will be a problem with the three-letter airport codes because every system built in the past 50 years will be using that. Fixing, replacing…

> Wouldn't be surprised, a lot of older systems - and the airline industry has a lot of older systems - worked with really tight and compact constraints, for which I'm sure there was a technical reason at the time. There was a story by a man named Amr whose name could never survive a trip through airline booking systems that encode the gender in the given name field: "SMITH/JOHNMR". His name would always come back as…

My initials are J.R. In the US, when these are printed after my surname, a lot of people think I'm Junior.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#202

Post by Ichthypresbyter »

dejv wrote: post #160

It reminds me group of Slovak tourist that booked flights to Niš, Serbia instead of Nice, France as is pronounced a same. They really looked forward to nice beach vacation and were disappointed a bit.

A friend of a friend worked in the tourist office at the airport in Rodez, France. Apparently a significant part of her job was dealing with British tourists who thought they had booked flights to the Greek island of Rhodes.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#203

Post by Ichthypresbyter »

xtracto wrote: post #111
RegnisGnaw wrote: post #4

I lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (eh?) for 23 years and we have similar stories. There is an island that is part of Nova Scotia called Cape Breton with a city named Sydney (so Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada) with population of ~30K. Every few years we get a tourist that confuses that with Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. They generally realize something is wrong when they switch planes in Halifax from a Jet (B…

Several years ago I lived in La Paz, BCS, Mexico. A friend of mine worked in the Mail service in that city and told me they received A LOT of mail that was meant to be sent to La Paz, Bolivia.

Apparently in several cities the staff of the Slovakian and Slovenian embassies meet regularly to exchange wrongly addressed mail.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#204

Post by raverbashing »

Clewza313 wrote: post #50
RegnisGnaw wrote: post #4

I lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (eh?) for 23 years and we have similar stories. There is an island that is part of Nova Scotia called Cape Breton with a city named Sydney (so Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada) with population of ~30K. Every few years we get a tourist that confuses that with Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. They generally realize something is wrong when they switch planes in Halifax from a Jet (B…

Extra bonus fun: Concur, everybody's favorite corporate flight booking engine, shows both Sydney, Nova Scotia and Sydney, New South Wales as "Sydney, NS" in the destination selection dropdown.

> Concur, everybody's favorite corporate flight booking engine

Ah yes

But the coincidence between NS and NSW is just way too unlucky

I'm happy I know a bit about booking codes and how airlines work to be able to look through the user interface for what might be wrong.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#205

Post by raverbashing »

geocrasher wrote: post #67

My first job was at a Staples office supply store in a town known for its tourism and glitz and glamour. Several times in my 15 months at that store, a German tourist would be seen wandering around the store, clearly lost. More than once they asked, in broken English, "where is the Milk?" staple /ˈstāpəl/ plural noun: staples 1. a main or important element of something, especially of a diet. "bread, milk, and other s…

> and the local grocery stores were Alpha Beta, Vons, and Ralphs,

Well talk about making it easier for outsiders

(though to be fair Publix does not sound like a supermarket neither)

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#206

Post by cyxxon »

ma2rten wrote: post #175
geocrasher wrote: post #67

My first job was at a Staples office supply store in a town known for its tourism and glitz and glamour. Several times in my 15 months at that store, a German tourist would be seen wandering around the store, clearly lost. More than once they asked, in broken English, "where is the Milk?" staple /ˈstāpəl/ plural noun: staples 1. a main or important element of something, especially of a diet. "bread, milk, and other s…

Was this a very long time ago? Staples is a well known chain of office supply stores in Germany as well.

As a German, I only know Staples from American TV shows and movies. Is there Staples IN Germany? And yes, I live in a city of several hundred thousand inhabitants.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#208

Post by heresie-dabord »

smnrchrds wrote: post #11
RegnisGnaw wrote: post #4

I lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (eh?) for 23 years and we have similar stories. There is an island that is part of Nova Scotia called Cape Breton with a city named Sydney (so Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada) with population of ~30K. Every few years we get a tourist that confuses that with Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. They generally realize something is wrong when they switch planes in Halifax from a Jet (B…

Saint John, New Brunswick and St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador must confuse people too. I never remember which one is which without Googling it.

Mnemonic:

Newfoundland and Labrador = 2 entities => Saint John's

New Brunswick = 1 entity => Saint John

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#209

Post by Leherenn »

I once booked a return ticket which did not go back to the same airport (though it was the same city, 2 hours of public transport appart). I was pretty confused while waiting at the gate when they announced the "wrong" airport, took me a while to realise I was not at the wrong gate and that it was actually my flight.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#210

Post by tecleandor »

scirocco wrote: post #186
fishywang wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite similar pair is Yinchuan (a city in western China) vs. Incheon (a satellite city of Seoul and where their bigger airport is). They sound very similar in Chinese, and in China people usually refer to Incheon airport as "the Seoul airport" (a lot of average Chinese people probably don't even know Seoul has another airport), and to make things worse, the IATA airport codes for the two are INC vs. ICN. So the…

Three years ago I booked a flight to San Juan (SJU), Puerto Rico by mistake. I was supposed to go to San Jose (SJO) in Costa Rica. I will never forget the moment I read "SJO" in the email realizing I should have booked a flight to "SJU". Then going into Google, and typing SJO to find out where I was actually flying. I was prepared for it to be in Asia, Africa or anywhere. Luckily, Puerto Rico was just a small detour…

Ha! I've got a friend who, on his very early 20s, wanted to stay for a while in Ireland to learn English while working (Madrid, Spain, here). He had a big farewell party, drank a bit too much, and missed his flight early in the morning, only to find that he had booked a flight to BERLIN instead of DUBLIN.

He was so lucky to miss it, imagine that hangover-y arrival to Berlin imagining it's Ireland.

Post reply on HN