Jeebus H. Cripes, I've missed two flippin' flights in a row

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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…business flights, no less. This could fairly be a Pitting, but since I’m sure my little problems don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, I’ll let out my frustrations here.

I was scheduled to fly to Paris for a week-long meeting last Saturday; ticket was booked by the company’s in-house agent in early Feb. I’m supposed to chair one of the committees for the Tuesday session. Arrived at the airport in plenty of time, breeze through the line in about 20 minutes, step up to Contintental’s ticket kiosk and…confirmation code refused. I call a representative over, he tries it, no go. He goes off to consult with someone, comes back a few minutes later, points to the itinerary and says, “Here’s the problem: your departure date was Feb. 10”. Oh, crap. Nothing he can do, sez he; flight’s booked up, you’ll have to book another one, yadda yadda yadda.

Ok, so I contact our agent and after some futzing around, reschedule for Monday (going any earlier would have been 3600 bucks vs. 1300, and I’m guessing I’m not quite that important to the company).

OK, so it’s Monday. I hie myself off to the airport about two hours in advance of the flight. This time only about a third of the ticket kiosks are open and it takes more than an hour to get through the line. I finally wash up in front of one with 40 minutes to go and guess what: refused again. Crap crap CRAP! Near as I can tell, I’ve fallen afoul of the new DHS regs requiring a manifest be transmitted to them a certain amount of time prior to departure. Continental agent: the now familiar spiel about how there’s nothing they can do, you’ll have to book another one, etc.

So now I’m booked for Tuesday’s 6:40PM flight, for which I’ll be in the goddammed airport at 8AM, I swear.

If I still have a fucking job after tomorrow, that is. I tend to be a bit pessimistic that way.

Crap crap crappity crap. Oh well, guess plenty of people at the head office will know my name after this one.

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Heh. Not much flexibility in the system over there eh?

I had a flight once from Broome (BRM) to Darwin (DN) via Kununurra(KU.) The airline flies the route twice a day. I had looked at my roster for my flight details and noted the check in time for the BRM - KU leg. I arrived an hour prior to the flight, got checked in and all was good. An hour and a half later I was in KU.

Normally there is a twenty minute stop in KU before the flight continues to DN. This flight was no different. After about twenty minutes milling around in the KU terminal, a boarding call was made and I followed everyone else out into the plane.

The hostee did her walk up and down the isle counting heads. Then she did it again. Then she did it once more. Finally she got the passenger list out, had a look, and made her way towards me.

“May I see your boarding pass please?” she says.
“Certainly,” I replied, and smugly presented my pass.

She had a look at it and then kindly advised me that it was only for the BRM - KU leg. D’oh! Suddenly I didn’t feel so smug. She asked about the booking, and I told her I knew nothing about it as it was booked by my company (another airline.) She went away and had a chat to a few people then came back and told me what had happened.

Apparently the numb-nuts in my company’s travel department had booked me on the first BRM-KU flight and then the second KU-DN flight. This involves a five hour wait in KU. Because I was on two seperate flights, the check-in-chick at BRM had only been able to check me through to KU and I was supposed check in again there. I think she’d explained this to me but I hadn’t listened.

The good news was that there was obviously a spare seat on the earlier flight anyway so I was allowed to stay on it.

The funny thing was that I’d shown my invalid boarding pass to the person at the gate in KU and they’d let me board. Obviously they don’t bother actually reading it.

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Didja make it? At least the office is close to the airport :slight_smile: