Your Fun (or not-so-fun) Airport Stories

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, I’m flying again in a week and a half. I’m pretty excited. I only just started flying places under a year ago, but, aside from security, I enjoy it. It probably has a lot to do with going to places where there are people I care about and seeing new places (never traveled much as a kid, unfortunately). I also, weirdly enough, enjoy people watching when I’ve finally found my gate. That’s probably related to my love of lurking on message boards too. :wink:

Anyway, does anyone care to share a tale about their airport experiences? I’m sure there have got to be thousands of those stories out there. Did you have a great experience in an airport? Some crappy time you want to rant about? Just an odd situation you saw/were involved in?

My story would be a happy one be about having a nice conversation with a cashier at a food joint and having her recognize the town where I’m from. Most people have no clue where it is, despite it being a military base. But she was a very nice woman in a very busy airport and took a moment to ask where I was from, and it warmed my heart to know that someone recognized where I grew up, as well as the awesome men and women in the service that are stationed there. :slight_smile:

2

I had just arrived at the Metra station after my flight home from Nevada. I had gone to visit a long-distance boyfriend for the first time, and the result was a truly *spectacular *failure. I had quit smoking for him months before that. After that shit went down, I started smoking again. I was feeling extremely low, I was tired of traveling, and just wanted to get home and shower/sleep.

I had called a cab company from the NV airport earlier in the day and scheduled a pickup at the train station. When I got off the train, there was no cab. And of course, my cell phone was dead. I called the company from the payphone, and the dispatcher said they didn’t have any cabs available–then hung up on me. I was 5 miles from home, low in spirits, and it was thunderstorming like hell. My mom was out of town for a pagan thing, my sister didn’t have a car, I hadn’t written down the phone number to any other cab places, and I was out of quarters anyway. I seriously felt like the heroine at her lowest point in some terrible Harlequin romance novel.

So I sat on a covered bench for a little while, feeling very sorry for myself. I figured I’d have to walk home, and I knew the way, but I was worried that my phone and laptop would get ruined by the water (my luggage was in a large non-waterproof duffel bag like this). And I was so fucking tired.

Then a city truck drove up, and the man driving it asked me if I was OK. I really wasn’t, although I didn’t expect anything except idle condolences/maybe an offer to call the police, or something. But he offered me a ride home! The driver was an old black guy, and during the trip he asked me why I was traveling so far by myself (he had seen my luggage tag when putting my bag in the truck). I told him about the breakup. He offered some really sage advice for getting over it (and some religious advice that I didn’t mind, even though I’m an atheist). I’m extremely introverted and normally would never bring up my shit with a stranger, but he asked. And he was really easy to talk to (plus, the tiredness). He also wouldn’t let me pay, although I offered.

I know this sounds ridiculously rhetorical and unbelievable. Hell, I wouldn’t believe this shit could happen to someone outside of a movie. But, there it is. I swear on my life it actually happened. When I think about that guy now, I think of him as my Wise Janitor.

3

I don’t know if this qualifies as fun or otherwise, but some years ago, I was traveling with two coworkers, on our way home. Our first flight was late getting in, and of course, the connection was *waaaaaaaay *on the other side of the airport. They were running and I was going as fast as I could, hauling my bags, sure I was going to die. But we made our connection, and I was literally the last person on the plane - they were holding for us.

I felt like we were in a cheezy movie. Except I didn’t have a long-lost love awaiting me at the end of the trip.

That’s a pretty dull story, now that I see it written out…

4

Going on honeymoon to Guadeloupe, via Paris. We booked a through flight with Air France, but due to their fuckup the flight from Dublin got into Charles de Gaulle with 30 minutes to spare, and we were in the wrong terminal. An Air France rep met us at the plane and ran us through the airport - we were sprinting - to get onto the ancient DC10 to our destination. We made it. Our bags didn’t. We were in Ireland-in-June clothes and had no washkits. We got a voucher each for €70 to replace everything. All I could get for this was an outsize Hawaiian shirt, shorts, flip-flops and a toothbrush. Not a good start to the marriage.

5

You’re in good company. Mine’s utterly inconsequential.

6

I once yelled and waved at Charles Nelson Reilly.

7

I was working for a DoD contracting office. We had planned a ‘whistle-stop’ TDY: drive to Philadelphia Sunday night; meet with first bidder Monday; drive to the airport Monday night, drop the rental car off and fly to Phoenix. Meet second bidder Tuesday. Fly to LAX Tuesday night. Meet third and fourth bidders Wednesday and Thursday. Fly home Friday. Four bidders in five days. Piece of cake, right?

We get on the plane in Philly about 6:00 PM. It’s raining, and the pilot announces a twenty minute delay. Twenty minutes later, he announces another twenty minute delay. It’s a weird storm that keeps coming in multiple waves. These short delays continue until it’s around…

11:45 PM

We’ve been sitting on the runway, stationary, engines roaring, for six hours. So, we’ve used up all our fuel. So the pilot announces, we need to refuel. But hey, no problem: we’ve been cleared to take off, so we will actually be getting to Phoenix tonight (albeit really late).

We wait while they refuel.

The pilot announces we are cleared for takeoff.

Yippie!

We’re seated in the back, where I happen to hear one flight attendant say to another, “Oh my God, don’t tell me that!” in a tone you don’t ever want a flight attendant to use.

A minute later, the pilot announces that since it’s past midnight, one of the flight crew has worked seven straight days. Which is prohibited by federal law. So,

The flight is cancelled

We taxi back to the terminal, where we all get off the plane.

We stand in line to retrieve our luggage, then stand in another line to get booked on other flights the following day.

By now, it’s around 3:00 AM.

The airline informs us that they will graciously pay for a hotel room.

This sounds like the first good news of the night.

Until I realize that with the long wait for a cab at this time of night, the time to drive to the hotel and check in, and the time to check out and get back to the airport for the flight the next morning, it’s probably best to just make a bed of my luggage on the floor.

Which I do.

Oh, and the flight from Hell is not without a coda:

Although we called our office as required to report our whereabouts the next day before boarding the plane, word did not reach the meeting in Phoenix.

So *they *reported us AWOL. And Security ‘released the hounds’ (i.e., started looking for us) until they learned that we hadn’t deserted or been kidnapped.

All in a day’s work.

8

I brought an omelet pan and a boxed grain mill through security in my carry-on bag at Logan in Boston. The TSA agent had to ask her supervisor, who appeared to assure her that I wasn’t going to storm the cockpit with a small frying pan or assemble the cast-iron grinder and threaten to push someone’s fingers into it. She came back looking sheepish and jokingly asked me to cook something for her first the next time I brought any interesting culinary stuff through.

9

Threw up at Heathrow once. Is that good for you?

10

I once boarded a plane with Monkee Mickey Dolenz. I don’t remember the airport. But I do remember that it was Southwest because I thought “Even Monkees have to go through the cattle call.”

Hmm. That story sucked.

How about this one: on the day that Congress voted on the Affordable Care Act in March 2010, I was sitting in the Branson, MO airport and I heard a very well-dressed woman accompanied by a young boy talking on her cell phone loudly about having to get to DC so she could be with her husband after he voted no on Obamacare. I googled who the congressman was for that area and it was Roy Blunt (now MO’s junior senator). According to Roy’s wiki page, they had recently adopted a little boy from Russia, so that would explain why the woman, married to a really old guy, was with a little boy at the airport. Bad weather in southwest MO prevented all of us from getting out of there that day.

Hmm. Yet again, not very interesting. Ok I got nothing.

11

I sat next to Andre the Giant on a plane from Japan to Hawaii. Not much talk, he slept. This is why I am never without a camera now.

12

Pretty boring to anybody else, but a few years ago I flew into Frankfort on Main airport and had a 6 hour layover before the train to Stuttgart. I decided to pass the time at the cafe above the train station, and a bunch of young 20 somethings invited me for breakfast and brunch so they could practice their english with me, and they paid for all the munchies. It was a blast, we talked about all sorts of stuff and passed 6 hours happily. Then one of them helped me find my train and made sure I got off to Stuttgart safely. We got interrupted twice and had to move back into the airport part of the terminal complex because of 2 phoned in bomb threats. :dubious:

13

While waiting in the line for the required TSA groping, uh, screening recently, I noticed one of the group of women just ahead of me in line was wearing thigh-high boots. It was very interesting watching a middle-aged woman try to take those off without falling over.

Early in our marriage, I had to take my now-ex to the airport to send him off to Alaska to his new assignment to Ft. Wainwright. After the plane took off, I sat down at an empty gate and cried. As I was sobbing my heart out, a nice man handed me some tissues, sat down nearby and waited for the crying to slow down. When I had pulled myself together he asked if there was anything he could do to help, was I safe to drive, etc? I said I would be OK and he patted my hand and walked away. Such a kind man!

When I was 10, I got separated form my family and temporarily lost at the airport in Beirut, Lebanon. That scared my mom and dad pretty good, they talked about it for years afterwards.

14

When I was a kid, my family was on vacation in Chicago at the same time that my grandparents had a connecting flight through O’Hare. They had a bit of a layover, so my family surprised them by showing up to see them while they waited for the next flight.

15

Something similar happened to me once too. My dad and I travel a lot for work, and early one morning (and I rarely take early morning flights), while sitting at a gate in O’Hare (I lived in Chicago at the time), my dad calls me. He asks if I’m travelling, and I tell him I’m about to be. He says he’s at O’Hare on a layover. We were completely across the terminal from each other, and we figured our gates were too far apart for us to meet up and still have him catch his next flight. Still a very weird coincidence.

16

  1. Similar kind of story, except I was 17 and flying alone for the first time. From Shanghai to Washington, DC. I had to make a tight connection in San Francisco and the flight from China was a little late getting in. Cue the mad dash: I had to fill out all the forms, deplane, go through Customs & Immigration, get my checked luggage, run through the airport to switch from the international to the domestic terminals (which required re-checking my bag with the airline down there and going through the TSA checkpoint again, for some reason), and make the flight. I don’t think I would have made it except that when I arrived at the gate for my flight to Washington, it turned out that some kind of ceiling panel had fallen out in the cabin and the flight was delayed 30 minutes. Phew.

  2. I had a flight from Colorado Springs to Washington this past spring where they had a funny fix for a mechanical issue at the gate. There was some kind of horrible weather system covering most of the middle of the country so all the flights going to Chicago or Texas were delayed and the airport was a mess. We were excited to board on time and push back from the gate. Right after that, the captain came on the PA and said, “We’ve got some kind of warning light here that won’t turn off, we’ll have to hold and call the mechanic. It’ll just be a few minutes.”

Well, when you hear that, the automatic assumption is that “a few minutes” means “3+ hours.” Nope, not this time. We were still close enough to the gate that they didn’t have to tow us back in. Instead, they popped open the forward door right there on the tarmac and 2 minutes later, a United mechanic appeared. Then the captain got back on the PA:

“Well, folks, we’re just going to turn the plane off and turn it back on again and see if that helps. So it’ll get a little quiet in here for a minute.”

Engines shut off. Being on a fully-loaded but totally silent airplane is a little bit creepy. Not to mention wondering about the fact that their solution to a mechanical problem is to do what my computer-challenged mother does whenever something freezes on the screen. A minute later, the engines came back on and they told us, “Looks good! Just gotta fill out some paperwork and we’ll be on our way.”

Total delay was about 10 minutes. No problems on the flight. It was weird.

17

The first time we flew with an infant, we thought we’d be prudent and take twice as much enough (ready-to-use) formula in our carry-on as we expected to need.

Our flight from Vancouver to Quebec City had a brief layover in Toronto - and by brief I mean we landed in the middle of an electrical storm and were obliged to remain on the runway for longer than it took to actually fly across the entire continent - four hours in the air and five hours waiting to disembark. Of course, we missed our connection and had to wait until morning to get another flight to Quebec City. The bulk of our formula was in the checked baggage, and there was no place to get any in the small hours, so it was a long overnight.

Yeah, now we know to that “twice enough” is not sufficiently prudent, and keep a few *days’ *worth of powdered formula with us even if we only expect to be in transit for hours.

18

First flight I was ever on was Johnstown, PA-Pittsburgh-Buffalo around '67 or so. I was 13 and traveling by myself. The first leg was a bit late into PIT, and after hustling to the gate for the Buffalo flight, I was panicked to see the plane disappearing down the taxiway. The gate agent noticed my plight and made a phone call. I watched in amazement as the plane turned around and taxied back to the gate to let me on board. I’m pretty sure that sort of thing would be unheard of today.

Belize was a stop on a Guatemala City-Miami flight I took back in the early '80s. At the time the place was like a bad Hollywood parody of a banana republic. We taxied in past a series of reinforced bunkers, each housing a RAF Harrier jump jet (Guatemala had long been threatening to annex Belize). The terminal was a tiny, decrepit concrete structure in faded pink paint, surrounded by weeds. Once we came to a halt, I looked down and there were chickens pecking away at the edge of the tarmac, a few feet away from the plane.

Was flying Amsterdam-Johannesburg on KLM one time. The flight was overbooked and as departure time neared, the gate agents called out about twenty names, mine among them. As we stood in line to get what we assumed to be news that we’d been bumped off the flight, the guy behind me was complaining bitterly how he’d planned this flight for months, that this was going to completely ruin his travel plans, he was going to sue, on and on and on. Finally we get to the podium , the agent takes our coach tickets. . .and hands us boarding passes for Business Class instead. That quieted down the other guy a bit.

19

In 1983 I was at school in Chicago. The minister from my church back home was flying from New York to Kansas City, with a connection at O’Hare, so I went to the airport to visit with him on his layover.

While waiting I saw an older couple, maybe in their mid-sixties or so, sitting nearby in the waiting area. Average, middle-class looking folks, likes someone’s grandparents. So the woman take out her purse, retrieves a pair of tiny scissors, and starts trimming the hair in hubbies ears!:eek: When that is done he tilts his head back and she starts in on the nose hairs!:eek::eek:

20

i love going through customs …especially when they get to the “personals”