Qahtani saw more of America than he could have imagined as he attempted to get to a university there. For three days he traveled by plane and taxi through several states after an airline sent him to the wrong city in the wrong state. Al-Qahtani, a student in the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques External Scholarship Program, earned a chance to study emergency medicine at Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky, but an airline flew him about 800 km away, to Richmond, Virginia, where his journey of suffering began. Al-Qahtani's father told Okaz/Saudi Gazette that his son first reached Washington D.C., where he completed official procedures and went straight to the airport to fly to Kentucky. Al-Qahtani was more than a little surprised when he arrived at his destination and nobody from the school was at the airport to meet him. He was shocked to learn that he was in the wrong state. The student's father said his son does not speak English well and struggled to communicate with people at the airport. It only got worse when his mobile phone needed to be charged and there were no outlets available. There were no reservations available, either, so Al-Qahtani had no choice but to pay a driver almost SR2,000 for a ride of about 200 km back to Washington. He reached the nation's capital exhausted and full of stress and waited there for two days for a direct flight to his destination, but he was forced to fly to a city in the state of Ohio and he flew from there to Kentucky. Al-Qahtani, who bore all the expenses involved in his ordeal, broke into tears in the first telephone call to his family after he finally arrived at his university, his father said. He was able to make the call with the help of someone at the university who learned of his strange, difficult journey. Al-Qahtani's father has demanded that the airline pay compensation for the costs, delays and stress his son incurred as a result of their mistake. That too has been a long, frustrating experience, said the man who spent three weeks contacting the airline before he was told it was not responsible and would not pay compensation. He is now looking into which government agency has authority over the matter and hopes it will ensure that his son is compensated. A source in the airline confirmed that it has received a complaint from Al-Qahtani's father and that it is investigating the matter.
