But his journey didn’t go quite as expected.
Emmanuel Akomanyi couldn’t get a direct flight to Guyana so he boarded a plane in Ghana to Guarulhos International Airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
There, he bought a ticket to his final destination in Guyana — a South American country on the Caribbean coast bordering Surinam, Venezuela and Brazil.
But when he got off the plane, he was not in Guyana — he was in the city of Goiania, Brazil — almost 3,000 kilometers away from where he needed to go.
Akomanyi spent a week in Brazil, supported by strangers as he had no money.
The airline that sold him the original ticket eventually helped him out with a new flight to Guyana’s Cheddi Jagan International Airport, near the capital Georgetown.
The latest in a long line of mix-ups
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The airline flew the misdirected passengers to their original destination via another flight, reported local news outlet Thanh Nien News.
In January earlier that year, another Southwest Airlines plane landed at a small airport in Taney County, Missouri, approximately seven miles from where it was meant to land at Branson Airport.
Due to the difference in airport runway lengths — Taney County airport’s runway is 3,738 feet compared with Branson Airport’s 7,140 feet — pilots were forced to brake hard when the plane touched down.
No one was hurt and the airline refunded all tickets and provided future travel credit for passengers.
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Originally published June 2014, updated February 2015.
