Airline Mix-Up Sends Passenger to Grenada Instead of Granada

It’s probably best to double-check, triple-check, and then quadruple-check your destination when buying an airline ticket online. If you’re doing it the old-fashioned way and speaking to a live agent, make sure you are using correct pronunciation. An American tourist found this out the hard way when a British Airways flight took him to Grenada (gruh-NAY-duh), which is an island in the Caribbean Sea, instead of to Granada (gruh-NAH-duh), which is an ancient fortress city in Spain.

Edward Ganson, a dentist, is suing British Airways for the mistake. Ganson claims that despite his insistence otherwise, the agent issued him a ticket to the wrong city, in the wrong country, on the wrong continent.

“I made it absolutely clear to the booking agent I wanted to go to Granada in Spain. Why on earth would I want to go to Grenada in the Caribbean if I was flying back to America from Lisbon?”

Ganson is suing for the cost of his first-class ticket and for the cost of tours he missed in Spain.

Granada is known primarily for the ancient fortress known as the Alhambra and for the city’s abundant Islamic art. Ganson says that this mix-up cost him his life-long dream of studying Islamic art up close.

Grenada, on the other hand, is a sleepy island in the Caribbean sea known mostly for tourism, its spice trade, and for being the location of a U.S. military invasion in 1983.

While alarming, destination mix-ups such as these are surprisingly common. In May 2013, an American couple planning to visit Dakar, Senegal (in Africa) wound up in Dhaka, Bangladesh (in Asia). Also in 2013, an 85-year-old woman wound up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania instead of Fort Myers, Florida.

Besides similar-sounding names (Granada/Grenada or Dakar/Dhaka), airline booking agents (and passengers) can also find themselves in mix-ups due to identical names. Do you want to go to Toledo, the industrial city in Ohio or to the much older Toledo in Spain? Do you want to go to Springfield, Illinois, Springfield, Missouri or Springfield, Massachusetts (all three cities have commercial airports with regular passenger flights).

And finally, airport codes can be a problem. Hit the wrong key and instead of Orlando (MCO), you’ll find yourself in Kansas City (MCI). Want to go to Boston? Make sure you hit BOS when you punch in the code. If you accidentally hit BOI, you’ll be enjoying Boise, Idaho instead of Beantown.

Have you ever had an airline mix-up send you to the wrong destination? Tell us in the Comments.

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