Oops. British couple flies to Canada by mistake

Two teenagers from England who thought they had booked a flight to Australia began an unexpected holiday in Nova Scotia this weekend.

Raeoul Sebastian and Emma Nunn, both 19, purchased their tickets from a travel agent over the Internet last April.

Although they wanted to go to Sydney, Australia, they wound up flying across the Atlantic and ended up in Halifax Thursday instead.

At first they thought the six-hour journey to Canada was part of the routine flight to Australia. They began getting concerned when asked to transfer to a much smaller plane. The couple wondered how the aircraft could make it all the way Down Under.

It was "really, really confusing," Sebastian told CBC on Sunday. "We thought that, OK, we're going to wait here and there's going to be a big plane that's going to turn up and take us to Australia. It didn't quite happen that way."

When the second plane landed a short time later in Cape Breton, they realized the trip was over.

"As soon as I saw the sign 'Sydney, Canada,' I knew that obviously it can't be a mistake," Nunn recalled. "I knew we couldn't be going to get on another plane. I thought, 'Oh my gosh, we're in Canada.'"

The teenagers haven't exactly flown off the handle, however. They've spent the long-weekend exploring part of the world they know nothing about taking long walks by the ocean and feasting on lobster. Local people have been extremely friendly, they said.

They want a refund from the Internet travel company, and are hoping to reschedule their three-week trip to Australia for next year.

In the meantime, they're trying to work out an arrangement with Air Canada to fly back to London in a few days their home town, that is, not London, Ont.