Horror as Friends Think They're on Flight to Costa Rica—Then Discover Truth

A video about two friends who made an unfortunate travel blunder—accidentally booking a flight to the wrong destination and ending up in a different country—has gone viral on TikTok. The incident was highlighted in a video shared by a poster known as @legendarylynne, which has garnered 5.6 million views since it was posted on March 19. The clip, which features a woman rolling a couple of suitcases through a building, has a note overlaid on it saying: "They don't know it yet but they are going to hop on a plane to San Jose, California, instead of San Jose, Costa Rica." A caption shared with the post simply says: "No, we did not realize until we landed." The viral post shows that air travel continues to show strong growth in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era. The load factor—the percentage of available seats an airline sells on its flights—reached a record level of 82.1 percent in January, marking an all-time high for the month, the International Air Transport Association reported in February. The total passenger demand for air travel rose by 10 percent in January, from the figure reported in the same month last year, the IATA said. Speaking to Newsweek, the poster, who did not share her age, revealed more details about the incident, which happened a couple of years back in December 2022. The two friends were traveling from LaGuardia Airport in New York City, she said, noting that she doesn't recall the airline with whom they were traveling. The poster said: "We booked this trip pretty last minute. It was three weeks before we intended to depart," adding that they had booked their airline tickets separately. "This is the first trip I'd ever booked solo. I was so excited to book it that I didn't doublecheck anything. I was kind of hoping she did," she said. She noted that neither of them had realized their blunder even from their tickets. "The boarding pass said San Jose, CA and I guess we thought that stood for Costa Rica or something, like Vermont – VT," she said. The pair did not realize their mistake until they landed in California when the poster's friend asked a flight attendant about how to get to Santa Teresa, a small town just outside the Costa Rican capital San Jose. "The flight attendant was confused obviously, and realized our mistake before we did," the poster noted. Luckily, the travelers eventually made it to their hostel in San Jose, Costa Rica, via a flight with a layover in Houston, Texas, and their flight from California to Costa Rica cost around $400. "We found a cheaper option that included a layover in Houston overnight, so we slept in the airport," she said, noting that "if you include the lost money for the motel we had to book, the lost nights in our hostel in Costa Rica, Ubers, checked bags, last-minute shuttles, I'd estimate it as $1,000 each." The two friends arrived in Costa Rica three days later than they'd intended. In a subsequent video shared on TikTok, the poster said they got to the hostel at midnight, and "they greeted us with two rounds of shots each for our troubles." She said: "Honestly, it was the best vacation of my life. I extended it another week and I don't regret a single thing."

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