Man’s trip to Sydney, Australia ends up in Sidney, Montana

February 6, 2023

It was a tale of two Sydneys.

A New York man’s dreams of an idyllic Australian getaway crashed and burned spectacularly after a gross misunderstanding resulted in him flying to Montana instead.

“I saw the little plane with like 9 passengers and wondered ‘how is that going to get me to Australia.’” Kingsley Burnett, 62, told The Post. “That was when I caught onto the mistake I made.”

The New Yorker, who originally hails from Jamaica, had reportedly planned on flying from La Guardia to Australia, where he was slated to take a cruise departing from the warm Down Under metropolis of Sydney, KTVQ reported.

He realized things had gone horribly awry when he landed in Billings and saw snow and a small Cape Air Jet waiting to fly him to Sidney, Montana.

For reference, Sidney boasts just over 6,000 people while Sydney’s population is 5.3. million.

His epic travel gaffe was subsequently confirmed by the gate agent in Billings.

Burnett said he had gotten confused by the airport codes while booking the flight.

Kingsley Burnett, 62, had planned to take a cruise departing from Sydney, Australia.

Kingsley Burnett with Carol Castellano, the American Airlines agent who helped him following the flight mixup. — Burnett with Carol Castellano, the American Airlines agent who helped him following the flight mixup.

“It’s a matter of acronyms. The S-Y-D as opposed to S-D-Y. Somebody has to fix that,” he insisted, referring to Sydney and Sidney’s respective abbreviations.

It might seem odd that the traveler wasn’t tipped off by the massive price differential. However, Burnett, who was trying to be frugal with his vacation planning, said he had just been happy to find such a “bargain” for a transoceanic flight.

“I thought it was a good deal,” Burnett told the Post while chuckling. “I saw the SDY [Sidney] and the SDY was cheaper than the SYD [Sydney].”With no plans to visit Sydney’s stateside homophone, Burnett visited the American Airlines ticket desk in Billings, where an agent named Carol Castellano helped sort out his flight fiasco.

“Kingsley came, and he goes, ‘I’ve got a problem,’ ” described Castellano, who, upon learning of his plight, realized the New Yorker wouldn’t have time to catch his Australian cruise.

Kingsley, who had planned to travel cheap, was ecstatic after finding what he thought was a great bargain on a transoceanic flight.

So she booked the wayward fellow a return flight to New York, as well as a room at the Boothill Inn where he could spend the night. Interestingly, this wasn’t the first time that hotel manager Shelli Mann had observed such a mix-up.

“This is the second time we’ve had a guest that was trying to get to Sydney, Australia,” she said.

Despite accidentally flying to the wrong hemisphere, Burnett says he’s just grateful that Castellano was able to help him out.

“Montana didn’t have kangaroos. It had Carol. And that was good enough for me,” he gushed, noting he rescheduled his Australian trip for June.

Kingsley said he realized something was awry after looking out his window and seeing a "mountaintop covered in snow." — Kingsley said he realized something was awry after looking out his window and seeing a “mountaintop covered in snow.”

Burnett’s not the first person to fly to the wrong Sydney. In 2017, 18-year-old Milan Schipper of Vaassen, Holland, prompted facepalms around the globe after accidentally traveling to Sydney, Nova Scotia, instead of the intended Australian destination.

Humans aren’t the only passengers who’ve accidentally ended up on the incorrect continent.

In December, a Tennessee family was flabbergasted when an airline mistakenly sent their Nashville-bound dog halfway across the world to Saudi Arabia.