Published on August 10, 2009 Erin Pottie
SYDNEY - A grandfather and grandson are the latest wayward travellers who found themselves in Sydney, N.S., while on a journey Down Under. Joannes Rutten and 15-year-old Nick Rutten of Amsterdam, Netherlands, booked a two-day flight through a Dutch travel agency to visit family in Sydney, Australia.
SYDNEY - A grandfather and grandson are the latest wayward travellers who found themselves in Sydney, N.S., while on a journey Down Under. Joannes Rutten and 15-year-old Nick Rutten of Amsterdam, Netherlands, booked a two-day flight through a Dutch travel agency to visit family in Sydney, Australia.
On Saturday, as the pair landed in Halifax, they realized their flight had taken them in the wrong direction.
The elder Rutten, who speaks German, Dutch and some English, said they didn't know there was another Sydney. "We had 24 hours with no sleep," he said, sitting at the Delta Sydney hotel, Sunday. "It's not good, not good."
Clare MacDougall, an Air Canada customer service representative, was working at Sydney's J.A. Douglas McCurdy Airport when she heard about the pair's predicament. "I met the aircraft. When the aircraft door opened, the flight attendant said 'You're not going to believe it but we have two people who thought they were en route to Sydney, Australia,'" said MacDougall. "They arrived with no Canadian money - they had all Australian money." MacDougall said attempts were made to fly the travellers back to Halifax but the next outbound plane was full. Air Canada later contacted the Delta Sydney and asked if they could provide the pair with a free accomadations. They have now spent two nights at the hotel. The two are scheduled to begin travelling back Amsterdam this morning. Once back home, Rutten said he will sort out the flight mix-up. "I must say the ladies from Air Canada - perfect, perfect," he said, noting that his family was just as confused about the flight mix-up, including a nephew who waited to pick them up at the airport in Australia. The grandfather and grandson aren't the first travellers who came to Sydney, N.S. thinking they were headed to Australia. In August 2002, Raeoul Sebastian and Emma Nunn, both of London, England, spent their vacation in Cape Breton and became local celebrities after a flight mix-up brought them to another Sydney. And in December, an Argentinian woman, Monique Rozanes Torres Aguero of Buenos Aires, had been daydreaming about her vacation in Sydney, Australia, when her Air Canada Jazz flight landed in Sydney, N.S. Aguero decided to vacation to Cape Breton after befriending a local woman at the airport.
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