Vienna Airport Desk For Those Who Arrived In Austria Rather Than Australia?

I’m not sure where this falls on the scale of “cute joke” to “this is how misinformation spreads,” but please indulge me for a minute…

The Vienna Airport Austria vs. Australia claim

Over the years, I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen social media posts with a quote along these lines:

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“If your [sic] having a bad day, just remember Vienna Airport has a desk for those who arrived in Austria rather than Australia.”

You can find them on just about every social media platform, and some of the posts have been viewed tens of millions of times. Just take a look at the below grid, when searching “Vienna Airport Australia” on Instagram (at least this search also returns a Shawn Mendes photo?).

If you look at the comments on some of the super viral versions of the post, you’ll find very few people questioning if it’s true, and you’ll even see people saying things like “as a resident of Vienna and have used the airport alot, I can sadly confirm this is true.”

Yesterday, a non-travel acquaintance sent me a picture with that quote. I (virtually) chuckled, and then gently asked if he realized that wasn’t actually true… and he said he thought it was true.

So to state the obvious (or perhaps not obvious, to some?), there’s zero truth to the above, and it’s totally made up. For that matter, the claim doesn’t even make sense:

• If someone travels to the wrong place, there wouldn’t be one “desk” that could handle that, since it would all depend on the airline you’re flying
• If you’re going to end up in the wrong destination, odds are that you’d fly to a city with the same name in a different country, rather than to a country with a similar name; people book tickets to Sydney or Vienna, not to Australia or Austria

Anyway, this is an innocent joke, or white lie, or whatever you’d like to call it. Though perhaps this is reflective of the bigger issue of misinformation on the internet, and how many people will believe everything they read and see online, and even share it, without doing any sort of fact checking.

I also find the premise to be kind of odd, when you think about it — “if you’re having a bad day, just remember this completely made up claim.” I’ve gotta be honest, that doesn’t make me feel better about whatever issue I was having!

People do sometimes fly to the wrong destination

To give some credit to the concept behind this claim, though, let me note that once in a while — exceptionally rarely — people do end up flying to the completely wrong destination and country.

You’ll hear of someone who intended to fly to Sydney, New South Wales (Australia), only to end up in Sydney, Nova Scotia (Canada), or Sidney, Montana (United States), or something along those lines, thinking they got a screaming deal on a flight.

However, when that happens, it’s generally a global news story, because it’s that rare, funny, and unusual. These kinds of mix-ups don’t happen with nearly the level of frequency people assume, and certainly not enough to warrant a desk at any airport.

Bottom line

No, Vienna Airport doesn’t have a desk for those who accidentally end up in Austria rather than Australia. It’s a cute quote that has been shared endlessly online, but there’s zero truth to it. People do once in a while end up flying to the wrong destination, but it’s very rare, and it’s typically to a city with the same name as the intended destination, rather than to a country with a similar name.