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Comment by fishywang | Hacker News Reader

My favorite similar pair is Yinchuan (a city in western China) vs. Incheon (a satellite city of Seoul and where their bigger airport is).

They sound very similar in Chinese, and in China people usually refer to Incheon airport as "the Seoul airport" (a lot of average Chinese people probably don't even know Seoul has another airport), and to make things worse, the IATA airport codes for the two are INC vs. ICN.

So the urban legend is that for a lot of Koreans living in Beijing, when they are planning to go back to Korea, they go to a travel agent on the street (this was around 2000 so online booking were not ubiquitous) using their not so fluent Chinese to say "I need a flight ticket to Incheon", the agent will often book them to Yinchuan instead. Korean Air had a direct flight between Yinchuan and Incheon for a while (they probably still have that flight) and the urban legend is that flight is mainly for those confused travellers.

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Three years ago I booked a flight to San Juan (SJU), Puerto Rico by mistake. I was supposed to go to San Jose (SJO) in Costa Rica.

I will never forget the moment I read "SJO" in the email realizing I should have booked a flight to "SJU". Then going into Google, and typing SJO to find out where I was actually flying. I was prepared for it to be in Asia, Africa or anywhere. Luckily, Puerto Rico was just a small detour to Costa Rica (flew from Europe) :-)

I once booked san jose, costa rica instead of san jose, california. Discovered this already at the airport

SJC vs SJO

Me too! Exactly the same confusion. I thankfully discovered it a day-or-two before my flight and was able to correct the mistake.

Ha! I've got a friend who, on his very early 20s, wanted to stay for a while in Ireland to learn English while working (Madrid, Spain, here). He had a big farewell party, drank a bit too much, and missed his flight early in the morning, only to find that he had booked a flight to BERLIN instead of DUBLIN.

He was so lucky to miss it, imagine that hangover-y arrival to Berlin imagining it's Ireland.

How does one mix up Berlin and Dublin? Because of Pronunciation?

I'd imagine it has something to do with the phenomenon wehre you can raed the wrdos in a sntecnee eevn if tehy are jmlbued up. Plus being drunk would magnify the chance to mistake BERLIN for DUBLIN. The last halves of the words arethe same, and so do B and D as well as B and R if you squint.

shrugs In Spanish the accent for both Berlin and Dublin is in the last silabe, so it sounds a bit more similar than in English. This plus being naive, young and careless, I suppose... :D

I once called a travel agent to book a flight to San Jose (California). She mis-heard me as wanting to go to Santa Fe (New Mexico). She called me a few days later in a panic, saying "Sorry, I accidentally booked you a flight to San Jose. I'll cancel it and re-book it". Two wrongs do make a right.

> a lot of average Chinese people probably don't even know Seoul has another airport

I'd guess most people who haven't traveled domestically in Korea don't know this, full stop.

Gimpo's fairly big for business travel among the big East Asian cities too - Tokyo, Osaka, Taipei, Shanghai and Beijing (and maybe some others?) all have direct flights. In most cases those flights are to the more convenient "city" airport in those cities too.

I've been flying in and out of Seoul for years from Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, etc and I've never once been offered a flight to Gimpo. Could be an artifact of always flying the same airlines (mostly CX/SQ) though.

CX might have used to have a flight to Gimpo, but not now, and SQ doesn’t. I’ve flown there internationally on JAL, China Southern, Shanghai Airlines, and China Airlines, maybe some others.

I did notice that corp travel agents sometimes only search Incheon and need to be reminded that Gimpo exists.

The real fun is when you have to go from Gimpo to Inchon on a short connection because your company’s travel agents don’t know.

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