One Portland resident had a shock on a recent flight from London Heathrow (LHR) to Portland Oregon (PDX). Although the map of the journey was correct, the images of Portland were certainly not, and instead seemed to be taken 3000 miles away on the other side of the country.

It made people wonder, with all of the iconic street layouts, Mount Hood and general natural beauty of Portland, Oregon, how did an international airline manage to mix this up with Portland, Maine?

In the past, several people have booked flights to cities and then ended up somewhere else entirely due to not checking airport codes or maps. But this is a huge company which operates a fleet of hundreds of aircraft.

The images were taken abord the plane with around 1 hour flight time remaining and show the natural beauty of Maine. It’s highly likely that these images were purchased from a stock image website which features high quality photographs. The mistake would have been made by simply typing in the destination “Portland” – and choosing whichever images looked the most aesthetically appealing.

However, with many places in the western world sharing names, its not difficult to see how this strategy went wrong. For reference, the British Airways flight from LHR to PDX lasts approximately 12 hours.

This scenic image shows Portland Head Light – which is a tourist attraction in Maine, having stood in the same place since 1791. In fairness, it is beautiful in it’s own right, but it doesn’t really look anything like Portland Oregon and certainly couldn’t be confused with Stumptown, even if you had only ever visited the city once or twice.

So overall, its very unlikely that British Airways doesn’t actually know the difference between two cities on opposite sides of the USA. However, it does show a silly mistake can still be made by a company which carries around 50 million passengers each year!