Influencer accidentally books flight to wrong side of the world after embarrassing mix up
Getting Bucharest and Budapest mixed up when booking a flight is one thing, but at least you'd still be on the same continent. That's not the luxury one influencer had when her flight mix-up went to a completely different scale.
Reyna Nguyen was travelling through Europe in October 2025 but was looking forward to heading home to Sydney, Australia. Yet, her adventure would continue further.
Having become 'overwhelmed' by work, Reyna, who boasts more than 2.4 million followers on Instagram alone, delegated the booking of her flights to an assistant but didn't thoroughly check the confirmation.
It was only when she went to check in the day before that she clocked she wasn't going to Australia at all, but to Austria.
Advert
“I was just stunned. I could barely get any words out," Reyna, who goes by RocketReyna on social media, said.
She immediately called her assistant.
She explained: “I was like, ‘Jane, what is going on? We booked the wrong place. I don’t know how this happened, but I’m not going back home.
“She started having a panic attack and was asking what was going on. Then she said, ‘Oh, I thought you meant Austria.’”
She went on to enjoy the trip in Austria
But instead of cancelling the trip in a huff, Reyna followed through with the journey and headed to Vienna to make the most of the unexpected detour, staying there for three nights.
“I had never been before, and I was so glad that I did,” she said. “I thought, ‘Okay, we’ll just do it.’ I could take an extra few days off. It just sucked that I had to buy everything at the last minute, but we had a good laugh.
“Vienna was amazing. I went to a famous opera, and it made me very emotional. I just loved the art there.
"The art is insane.”
As it turns out, she is far from the first person to mistake Austria for Australia, even though there is 8,828 miles between the two nations that sit on opposite sides of the world.
“I took pictures of all the shirts that said, ‘This is Austria, not Australia,’ and, ‘There are no kangaroos here,’” she said.
A return to Vienna is planned
Though the end of her trip had descended into chaos and confusion, Reyna says she never grew angry with her assistant.
“I honestly thought it was really funny,” she said. “I was down for another adventure.”
“Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve remembered this saying: ‘What’s an adventure without adversities?’ It’s something I live by when something bad happens. I just think, ‘This is the spice of life.’"
Now plans are afoot for the content creator to return to the homeland of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Marko Arnautović, with the Vienna Christmas markets high on her list.
“I absolutely loved it, and I would go back,” Reyna added. “Maybe I never would have thought about going to Austria if this hadn’t happened.”
Daniel Murphy