Once in a while, you’ll see stories of people ending up on flights to the wrong destination. Maybe they booked the wrong flight, maybe they boarded the wrong aircraft, etc. However, I’ve never seen something quite like this before…
Continue reading: Americans Accidentally Take Flight To Tunis (Not “To Nice”), Hilarity Ensues
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
This is probably one of the reasons I book using IATA codes rather than entire city or airline names.
I couldn't read this story without thinking of the old bit:
"Yes, Sir, I booked you a ticket to Bangor."
"Bangor? I don't even know her!"
Given that Rome to Nice is an intra Schengen flight and a flight to Tunisia would require going through immigration control, that would have been a huge flag there to begin with.
Most Americans don't understand what the Schengen Area is, or that flights between FCO-NCE are effectively domestic. They just assume they need to "clear customs" all the time, and don't question the reason.
This sounds like a normal rebooking incodent which they are presenting as some fantastic incident for it to go viral.
This reminds me very much of an incident, which also really happened, when a lady tried to go to Porto, Portugal, and ended up being booked to Bordeaux, France, because of her dialect (Saxony/Germany) in which both cities basically sound identical. She actually sued the travel agency - and lost.
I’m glad YOU wrote that Ben (“ stereotypical American”) because otherwise i would have to comment something similar?! 😉
Missed flight, … they say airline employee booked them this flight … 😮 … but still, if your itinerary or even worse, your Boarding pass says not Nice but Tunis ….. that’s their own thing!
Double check, ALWAYS, just like when you check in luggage, ALWAYS check the tag and final destination!
… to me, sounds like Papa should NOT let those girls travel with his credit-card again! 🙂
airline employee might have been a handling agent or representative but NOT from the original airline i’d assume…. as that would then be pretty dumb!
But 1 girl says on the plane while boarding, “he must have misunderstood” ….. ?!?! Oh my!
US dialect in Rome, what can i say?!
Learn Italian!
… imagine a Rome elderly man with no English language skills in Dallas or Miami, … i bet, he would not even be able to get a domestic ticket as nobody would even try to understand Italian!
US Americas abroad! 😮 🙁 SAD, but at 90% a real thing. That’s why you hardly ever see older US Americans travel to any other establishment than a US hotel chain, cruise company or airline.
If they only spoke 1 language plus, possibly their dialect.
Try and see the next time you be abroad!
Passau —-> River Cruises (always a lot of fun to watch, US tourists arrive in organized busses, and still, they manage to loose their group leader! 🙂 :-))
Heraklion HER (Greece) —-> (yes, it is a crazy airport) but so much fun to see them at the terminal, lost to find their Check-in Counter for UNITED, if they have a connecting flight on Aegean first to ATH.
…. see it too often! Just funny to watch. 🙂
It should be mandatory for Americans to pass a geography test when applying for a passport
Yes there is absolutely no way this happened by accident. Thanks for giving them the views they want
As someone who followed along with this Tiktok journey yesterday, it's very clear why they ran into this issue. They kept saying "to Nice", "we need to go to Nice". In Rome, I am fairly certain that the person rebooking took "to Nice" as "Tunis", as the way they were saying it sounded similar. Especially because once they actually GOT to Tunisia, they continued to say they needed to go "to Nice". They originally missed the flight to Nice, France and Easyjet rebooked them. As for not getting off the plane, they said that the airline wouldn't let them as their luggage had already been loaded. I wouldn't be surprised either if this was some big stunt to try and go viral and become "TikTok famous". Sadly, Tunisia looks amazing, they probably should have just stayed there and flew to Nice later.
How did this happen? Most likely this:
Agent: Where are you trying to get to today?
Pax: To Nice.
Agent: Tunis?
Pax: Yes, to Nice.
Agent: Great. We have a flight at XXXX.
To Nice = Tunis.
That's how.
Also, not checking your boarding pass, airline name, etc. etc.
Most interesting part of this was getting a glimpse at the interior of a Tunisair flight, since the airline is one of the lowest rated airlines in the world. I was actually planning a trip on them until I read the reviews!
What if we pretend to get sent to the wrong destination in order to get all the Tik Tok views, and then hope some blogger falls for it too and gets us even more views?
Nah, that could never work…
@ Frank -- I feel pretty confident that a) these besties didn't intend to travel to Tunis and b) they did actually take a flight to Tunis. Other than that, it would be a good strategy to generate views!
We want hotel room for tonight.
How many nights?
We want tonight
Two nights ?
Yes tonight
From what I understand, they missed their Easyjet flight to Nice comma France. Then they claimed that the Easyjet person sent them to Tunis Air to get a ticket which led to all the chaos. I mean, if they had only checked Google flights to see that Tunis Air doesn't fly direct from FCO to NCE...but here we are.
And we Americans wonder why people from other countries think our tourist population are morons.
Of course they keep their backpacks on walking down the aisle too. Very fitting.
While I agree with the overall message of your post, I’ll disagree on the English aspect. It is the world’s common language. Watch a Chinese person in Indonesia, and both parties struggle to communicate in English as it is the most universal.
That's exactly what Jimmy Donaldson did. And people defended Jimmy just like Ben.
Look at Jimmy now.
It is too late by then. We need to take a preventive measure by requiring couples to be licensed to get married and have kids simultaneously. Like a driver's license. Then again, when people get news from social media, it speaks volume about their shallow and hollow knowledge. Social media is for entertainment. But it is a challenge to separate raw and factual news from opinions, conspiracies, revisionism, etc...
Oops I did it again.
I trafficked some weed, got an arms dealer freed.
I'm not that innocent.
Ignorance is fixable. Stupid is not. One might think that these folks would have checked the itinerary as soon as the booking was sent to them. Did they use a travel agent or book with the airline? Did they use an airline website/app and didn't pay attention? Som Ting Wong here.
A teachable moment.
This is one of those times where it’s helpful to know the name of the place you want to go in the language of the place you’re in. If they had said, “We need to go to Nice… Nizza”, that never would have happened. Just whipping out google translate and typing two words (Nice, France) would have saved them a lost ticket. Just because people CAN speak English in travel/tourism settings in Europe, doesn’t mean that you’ll always get your message across. Of course, these two probably would have said “Nizza” with an English “z” sound (Nizza rhymes with pizza) and still ended up in the wrong place.
In my experience Tunisia is a delightful country. It’s stuffed full of ancient historic sites (eg El Djem, Sbeitla, Carthage), and has good food and nice wine. The people are generally hospitable and welcoming.
It’s not got as pervasive a tourist scamming problem as, say, Morocco or Egypt. And it’s pretty liberal for an Arabic/ Muslim country — for decades women have held positions of power as well as men, it was the start of the Arab spring, etc.
Tourism is mostly French, Italian and German, so the hotels tend to be better quality than places which suffer from mostly cheap British tourism.
Tunisair has never pretended to be a great airline: it provides modest service for a not-very-rich country. I’d guess most visitors arrive on charter flights (although maybe that’s changed now, with easyJet and Ryanair). I haven’t flown Tunisair for decades, though it was perfectly acceptable the last time I did.
I don’t know whether TikTok is a moron magnet or if creating TikTok content in an attempt to go viral rots people brains but it’s basically the cesspit o the internet. I think TikTok users collectively have the lowest average IQ of any major online platform.
They’re content creators, creating content. This whole thing seems fabricated. What airline, from Rome, rebooks you onto Tunisair? It’s not in an alliance, it’s not a major connection point…
They booked the flight to Tunisia, boarded the plane, then flipped on the camera and started acting.
Loopy that both girls just accepted the mistake, took their seats and flew all the way to Tunis because the FA told them it'll be alright.
if there is intelligent life in space, if they ever intercept tiktok videos they are placing one of those warning beacons around the planet warning no one to land there cos the populous is just too thick.
Look how they vote for president, can't be surprised by their lack of cognitive capacity.
I would suggest for many to look up in a dictionary the word cognitive, but they likely already burned their books.
Thank you for referring to ”Tunis, Africa”! I found it quite hilarious that even though they were in Tunisia, they were unable to know the name of the country they were at.
They also gave the Tunisian airport staff such bad reviews, while it seems they got exceptional favors to board on a flight Tunis after the gate was closed.
Lastly, They were booked on Tunisair from Rome to Tunis and they are blaming the airline for not taking them to Nice while Tunisair does not fly Rome - Nice. So it is fair to assume that the mistake was done by a travel agency, and not any airline staff.
This is like the pathetic, unfunny version of the Two Ronnies' "Four Candles" sketch, which I realize is a stain and insult on the memories of Messrs. Barker and Corbett. Orange cats are said to have one brain cell. Not even an orange cat would have screwed this up. Please tell me they didn't let these two back in the country. If so, it would be the best argument I could muster for disbanding CBP.
Question 1: "Do I have a boarding pass for a connecting flight?"
Question 2: "If I don't have a connecting boarding pass, why am I getting on a flight between Italy and France where the primary language is Arabic?"
@Sean M. overestimated how many Americans who thinks they can fly to Europe with a driver's license and a loaded gun.
I fully agree with your comments about Tunisia. My wife and I spent over a week in pre-revolution Tunisia and loved it. I do not believe that we encountered any other American tourists during our visit.
These two are too stupid to be allowed to fly.
They might not have any books at home but they probably have plenty of guns.
Yep. They are generating content (that's why they film everything) and came up with this lame idea to get noticed in the mob of other content creators. They got just what they wanted from the rest of the internet.
I had this once when booking a train in Italy from somewhere to Monaco. Turns out that in Italian "Monaco" = "Munich, Germany". I needed to say "Monte Carlo" to get to the Monaco I wanted to go to. The very long train time and high cost gave it away that something was amiss and we figured out the confusion before it was too late.
There’s no way this is real.
Ignoring the airline and signs at the boarding gate, journaling the original discovery of their mistake while sitting down, chronicling the entire thing on video. This is just creators, creating, pretending to be absolute idiots for views.
This Is Real.
Next stop for these 2 tourists is to see the great wonders of the world.
They booked a ticket to Giza to see a tomb and world wonder.
They ended up in Gaza to see a tomb and wonder like the rest of the world, famine?
When I was a very VIP travel counselor Amex black card.... a call was gated to me and the gentleman begin with " You didn't do this nut please help..."
He was a US business traveler in Nice France. His son was a university student in Madrid. Dad suggested son come to Nice for a long weekend and use his Amex card at the local travel agency in Madrid. Son asked for a ticket to Nice. The agent heard " TUNIS " sway it with a Spanich accent.... The son though it odd that he was being routed via Rome..but whatever. Then he started noticing his fellow PAX on the Tunis gate area. He GOT ON THE PLANE ! had was now in Tunisia. I am NOT making this up ! 2007 and this young guy....anyway...he was in Nice late that night... Honestly !
Well depends on if teaching geography is pro-life or pro-choice. Or if a country is binary or non-binary.
Can a map own guns, cause climate change, or an immigrant.
Or the teacher union decides to go on strike.
Some things and people never change. In "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1953), Marylin Monroe is going to "Europe, France".
When people are not only stupid, but then they brag about it online, they need to have their brains checked
I wonder if they thought it was weird that there was an airline called "To Nice Air"?
Many years ago on the Oprah Winfrey show, she did a variety of tests on the audience. She started with geography and was floored at how many people had no clue where the continents were located on a map. I believe Jay Leno did the same out in the streets with random strangers. The European tourists were the only ones with no problems. Of course they could have cherry picked the ones they wanted to showed on tv but I have to say in my personal experience, Americans are pretty book stupid.
100% fake
Yes it really happened.
No it was not an accident.
Just another in this series.
Good thing they had their cameras rolling and a flight magically appeared to their destination. /s
No mention of the airline that screwed up? Yeah right
I was inclined to say, that THIS cannot even happen to Americans. But then, wait a minute,
who again was that democratically elected president of the USA?
Does anyone still believe that Americans ever made it to the moon?
We lived in Brunei, the full name of which is Brunei Darussalam (it translates to Bunei Abode of Peace). The daughter of a friend of ours mistakedly bought a ticket from U.K. to Dar es Salaam. She wondered why the flight was so short and why the people were so dark-skinned (and why her parents weren't at the airport to collect her).
I don't get why so many people are triggered, fake or not, it was funny. I was laughing at the tik toks and it was light hearted entertainment.
You have to factor in how many people want to get on television and don't care what they are known for. This would especially be true on Hollywood Boulevard or other parts of LA where Jay Leno did his questioning.
If Jay Leno comes up to you with a camera crew and asks, "What is the third planet from the sun?", and you want to be on TV, what do you say?
If you answer "Earth," you definitely won't be on TV tonight.
If you answer "Mars," you might be on TV tonight.
If you answer "New Jersey," you have a pretty good chance of being on TV tonight.
You keep falling for these marketing gimmicks trying to go viral and get used lol