Oh, that St. John!

By Diane Daniel, Globe Correspondent, 03/17/02

		Read about other travel disasters  Where they went  The Sensible Traveler

Only a screenwriter could have scripted the comedy of errors two Cambridge travelers lived through - and probably will never live down. For Martha O'Conner and Bob Fleck, who are energy consultants, their trip last May to visit a client in Saint John, New Brunswick, started uneventfully enough. To get to that Canadian city north of Maine, they'd have to change planes in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Before finalizing plans, they had checked the confirmation papers from their travel agent, but never looked at the tickets.

In Halifax, they were in a rush to make their connection. "We looked at the flight number on our tickets and that was the plane," O'Conner said. "Normally for that flight, you're on a prop plane, but we were on a jet."

After landing two hours later that Monday evening, "We told the cabdriver we wanted to go to the Delta Hotel and also asked how long it would take to get to our meeting the next morning," Fleck said. "We gave him the name of the company, and he said they were right across the street," which O'Conner had recalled from a previous business trip there.

After they'd checked in, they both noticed that the clock in their room said 10:30 p.m., while their watches read 10 p.m. They figured someone before them had moved the time ahead, perhaps in an effort to not be late, so they reset it. In the morning the weather had turned damp and cold, so they decided to take a taxi.

"I said, 'We're going to the Golden Ball building,' " O'Conner recalled. "The taxi driver looked at me like I had 10 heads. He didn't say anything and then he started driving out of town. I said, 'No, you're going the wrong way.' I showed the client's folder to the cabdriver and he started laughing and said, 'You're in the wrong Saint John.' "

Thanks to the travel agent, somehow between the confirmation and the actual ticket purchase, the flight had been booked for St. John's, Newfoundland, instead of Saint John, New Brunswick. Separating O'Conner and Fleck from their desired destination were about 1,000 miles, a lot of fog, and a 30-minute time difference.

"It seems like the stupidest thing, but it was really easy to do," O'Conner said.

The inconsistencies somehow made sense. Both flights connected through Halifax. Though they were on a jet instead of the usual prop plane, the flying time of two hours was just slightly longer than it would have been to New Brunswick. Most amazing, there was a Delta Hotel and a branch of the company, near each other, in both cities.

But would the clients understand? "I thought, 'We're in such deep trouble. We're going to look like idiots,' " O'Conner said. "Meanwhile, the cabdriver is howling, absolutely howling."

St. John's, by the way, the capital of Newfoundland, is the farthest northeastern point on the North American continent. And what was to have been a quick overnight business trip ended up being a six-day odyssey in chilly weather.

They went to the airport, expecting to fly back to Halifax. "Because of fog, no more flights took off for four days," Fleck said. The client was not pleased. "After three days we gave up on airplanes and we rented a car." They drove across the entire island.

They turned in the car and took an overnight, eight-hour ferry ride from Port-aux-Basques to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, then a 40-minute taxi ride to the airport. They made it home by Saturday. (A couple of weeks later, they consulted with their client, by phone.)

They returned to their offices Monday to find maps plastered across their walls and doors. "Everyone had a good laugh at our expense, and we joined in," Fleck said. "Suffice it to say, we read our tickets now."

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