Driving in a foreign country can be a daunting prospect, and there is no shame in messing up the GPS and getting lost. 

But when you have more than 250 passengers, your airborne vehicle costs $230 million and you end up some 11,000 km off-course, it's bound to make the news.

A Kuala Lumpur-bound flight ended up in Melbourne because its pilot input the wrong flight information into the plane's computer systems, an Australian inquiry has found. 

Inquiry findings into the March 2015 flight have just been published by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

The pilot keyed in the wrong longitudinal position for the aircraft prior to taking off from Sydney, sending the Airbus A330 west towards Melbourne, rather than Malaysia as intended. 

Instead of entering the longitude as 151° 9.8’ east, he incorrectly entered it as 15° 19.8’ east.

Aircraft crew realised their mistake once the flight was airborne, but for some reason were unable to fix the mistake, the report found. 

Passengers were stuck in Melbourne for three hours before finally making their way to Kuala Lumpur, where they eventually arrived six hours behind schedule.