He's not the first person to fly to the wrong Sydney — a 10,500-mile mistake

When Milan Schipper, an 18-year-old student in Amsterdam, said he accidentally flew to Sydney, Nova Scotia instead of Sydney, Australia, two weeks ago, social media users wondered how the Dutch teenager could have made the more than 10,500-mile mistake.

But the similarly named Sydney, Australia and Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada have bamboozled travelers before. Sydney, Nova Scotia does not have an international airport, which means far-flung travelers have often discovered their mistake only after ending up in smaller transfer aircraft headed to the northern region of 31,000 people.

According to the BBC, a British teenaged couple made the same unintended trip in 2002, though they stayed for the weekend to dine on local lobster and take long walks on the nearby beach. An Argentine traveler’s mistake while booking in 2008 led to the same mistake, according to the CBC.

And just a year after that, a Dutch grandfather and grandson also flew to the Canadian Sydney from Amsterdam, though they transferred in Halifax rather than Toronto, according to the Cape Breton Post. In 2010, it was an Italian couple’s turn to land in Nova Scotia instead of Australia, which appeared to be the most recent mixup before Schipper’s unexpected flights.

In several of these cases, Sydney, Nova Scotia residents have taken their mistaken identity in stride. For the Italian couple, residents offered them a free stay at a local hotel and a dinner, according to the CBC.

In Schipper’s case, he was lured by unusually cheap tickets, at least for Australian Sydney standards, he told the CBC.

The Dutch teenager eagerly booked a flight for what he hoped would be a backpacking trip before starting his college education. There was only one problem, which he discovered mid-air after transferring in Toronto — he had booked flights to Sydney, Nova Scotia instead of Sydney, Australia.

"I thought I was going to Australia, but that turned out a little different," he told the CBC radio show As It Happens.

Schipper was blissfully unaware of his mistake even when he spotted the plane he was transferring onto at the Toronto airport.

“The plane was really small and so I figured, would that make it to Australia?” he recalled to the CBC. When he saw the airplane seat screen after boarding the second craft, “I saw the flight plan was going to go right, not left. It was about the time that I realized there was another Sydney.”

“I felt terrible,” he added. “I think I [swore] in my head for like 10 minutes.”

But by then, it was too late. The mixup had a practical problem too: Schipper said he had packed only light clothes, expecting summer weather Down Under. Instead, when he arrived in chilly Nova Scotia two weeks ago, the area was expecting a blizzard.

Schipper told the CBC he didn’t stay long. He did not even leave the parking lot before the airline booked him a flight straight back the way he had arrived, the news site reported, and the teenager’s father was at the Amsterdam airport to pick up his wayward son.

“He felt really sorry for me, but he thought... only I could do such a thing,” Schipper said. “He also laughed an awful lot — just like everyone else.”

This story was originally published April 3, 2017 at 4:45 AM with the headline "He's not the first person to fly to the wrong Sydney — a 10,500-mile mistake."