Near the end of 1981 a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Lewenetz, took a flight from Moscow to the United States to visit his father. When they emerged from their airplane at the end of the trip, they expected to find warm, sunny Florida. Instead, they found themselves in frigid Alaska. The couple did not even realize their mistake, however, until they tried to get a cabdriver to take them to the address of Mr. Lewenetz's father. Later a resident of the town who spoke Russian helped straighten out the problem.

An official at Alaska Airlines explained what had happened. The couple wound up in Alaska rather than in Florida because an airport official in Moscow had left the “St." off “St. Petersburg, Florida," in filling out the tickets, thereby sending the couple to Petersburg, Alaska, a fishing town 1…