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

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

We just got back from our 2 week, 8 flight vacation and there were no airplane horror stories at all. The worst it got was on the Honolulu - SFO leg the kid in the seat in front of me spent the entire flight using his seat as a rocking chair. He was definitely old enough to know better but after speaking to him once and his mother once it became clear that she wasn’t going to do anything about it so I just kept my drink on my husbands tray table so it wouldn’t end up in my lap.

Couple of moronic people in the security lanes holding things up but no more than expected. Although the lady with multiple containers of pineapple chunks, mango chunks and a tupperware container with an entire spagetti dinner was fairly entertaining. “What do you mean I can’t take these on the plane. It says pineapple is okay”

Park’n’Fly however has earned my rage and I’m officially giving up on them and taking a damn taxi to the airport from now on.

22

I was once - (1986?) - on a long oceanographic voyage that terminated in Guanzhou, PRC. After a few days there I came out to Hong Kong, and eventually went to the airport to catch my flight home. I wandered around the terminal looking for the check in desk…once…twice…three times, but I couldn’t find it.

It turned out the airline had gone out of business and been completely dismantled and disappeared in the two months I’d been at sea.

23

For a graduation present, I took my daughter on a trip to Paris. (Yeah, I know, I’m a really nice Mom.) We flew Air France.

Checked in for the return flight, and we were asked if we would take a later flight in return for $300.00. To be sure I understood correctly, the amount was written down. To take advantage of this offer, we were told to go over to another desk. When we arrived, we were told the amount we would get – in Francs. How much is that in dollars? Oh, about $100. Oh, no, I said. We were told $300 each, see, it’s written down right there.

Did I mention that the entire area was a mass of confusion, no lines, just mobs of passengers and attendants milling about? Well, it was. We argued for a while and then the agent, in a fit of pique, TORE UP OUR TICKETS!

Then we had to fight to get on any flight. And our original seats had already been given to someone else. We finally, at the last minute, were allowed to board, but were given seats several rows apart. My daughter at the time was terrified of flying. She was having a meltdown. No one would change seats with us in the few minutes before takeoff. Eventually someone took pity on her and seats were switched.

We arrived back in the U S of A safely, but my luggage was not on the carousel. When we finally located it, the suitcase was totally smashed and the handle all but ripped off. Now, this was quite some time ago, and the suitcase was an American Tourister hard sided thing, one that they used to advertise the strength of by showing an angry gorilla being unable to damage it. What a gorilla couldn’t do, Air France sure could. I eventually was given a mere pittance for the damage.

I never want to fly Air France again.

24

I flew to China on business six or seven years ago. Landed in Beijing, and looked for my driver. Couldn’t find him anywhere. Did I mention that I don’t speak or read Chinese?

After a bit, I went up to someone who looked official, and asked if he spoke English. He didn’t. I showed him a piece of paper with a phone number on it. He took out a cell phone, called it, and chatted for a few minutes. He then walked me over to a door, signaled a 5 to me, and motioned for me to wait. Sure enough, my driver arrived. Of course, he didn’t speak English either, but he handed me a cell phone that had a co-worker already on standby to explain.
The airport in Chuuk has no air conditioning. While we were waiting for our plain, we decided it was cooler outside than inside. So we went out the gate…yes…the gate…and found a little tiki hut with some benches under it next to the runway. We had to go back inside once when a plane arrived…but once it took off, we were allowed back outside until our flight came in.
-D/a

25

I’ve had a few memorable airport experiences but the earliest and most indelible was in the late 1960’s when we ferried a family member to Toronto International Airport (which may have been more commonly know as Malton Airport back then) for a BOAC flight to Scotland.

Standing in the parking garage, we were able to watch the plane taxi toward the active runway. Without warning, a huge fireball erupted just beyond where we were looking. We learned a minute later that a Beechcraft Bonanza had bounced once or twice, barely missed bumper to bumper traffic on Hwy 401 and crashed at the threshold of of the active runway.

I remember hoping that folks on the UK bound plane had not witnessed the mishap.

26

Well, at least they didn’t try it while the plane was in the air.

27

I love Jeanne Robertson’s story about being in the airport and overhearing a daughter arguing with her mother: “He is too a nice guy! Why else would he be doing community service like that?”

28

This reminds me of another airport story of mine that had a happier ending. A couple of years ago, my coworker and I were flying to Chicago on a Sunday for work. The airline was looking for two volunteers to take a later flight that day in exchange for vouchers for $300 each. The work we were doing didn’t start until Monday, so we jumped at the chance. The airline employee bumped the voucher amount up to $400 each, gave us vouchers for food while we waited for the next flight, and got us first class seats on the next flight. I used my voucher for a trip to Vegas later that year.

29

My most (read: not very) interesting airport story is when I shared a flight with a professional wrestler. He was all decked out in WWF gear which said “get the F out”, probably advertising their name change to the WWE.

It was sort of weird watching people in the boarding room come up to him and ask if he was wrestler [so and so], since I had no idea who he was, plus, he obviously wanted to be seen since he was all decked out in the gear and didn’t shy away from talking to people. But he wasn’t making a lot of noise or had any crew with him or othewise actively advertising besides his apparel. I guess WWF must have thought it was a good idea to promote the name change partially via that sort of semi-passive publicity.

30

I used to travel a lot in a previous job, and the people doing the travel booking in Corporate usually put connecting flights within 15-30 minutes of one another.

Invariably, I would have to damned near sprint across an airport to make a connection if there was even the slightest delay in the first leg of my flight.

And once at my destination, I would have to wait for 2+ hours (if not come back the next day) to get my luggage, which failed to make the connection. I always had a toiletries kit and at least one change of socks and underwear in my carry on.

31

  1. Many years ago my father & I were flying out of Mt. Isa, heading for Townsville and from there to Brisbane and on home to Canberra. The flight out of Mt. Isa departed at 4am, which wasn’t a problem as we parked our 4WD at on the other side of the airport fence at the end of the runway and were woken up the plane (Fokker Friendship F.27) landing at around 3am.

  2. India: flying from Calcutta to Bangalore. First fun moment was going through the first stage of security, my pack was pulled aside after it was x-rayed. Apparently you can’t fly with electronic equipment that has batteries inside it (headlamp was the culprit there). No worries, dump the batteries out into my pack & off to the check-in counter.

Standing in line to check-in I notice that the people in front of me were taking tags from a bowl at the counter. When I checked in the airline agent didn’t say anything about them but, hey ‘when in Rome…’ so I grabbed a few. Naturally the boarding gate was at the other end of the terminal so after trekking over there and going through a few more security scans I made it to the final security check point which was a metal detector wand and x-ray of my carry-on bag. It was at this point that those tags everyone was grabbing came into play. Once my bag was scanned a tag was attached and stamped to show it had been OK’d by security.

They didn’t keep any tags at the security point so if I hadn’t picked some up at check-in I would have had to walk all the way back to the counter to get one and back, passing through security all over again.

Boarding: for whatever reason it was deemed a good idea to board two flights at the same time from the same departure gate. This entailed walking down onto the tarmac, showing my ticket to a guy at the exit and being directed to one of two buses waiting side-by-side to be shuttled out to the plane (I got on the right flight but surely some people must jump on the wrong bus).

Flight: damn good, weaving through localised thunderstorms was interesting & spectacular. To top it all off the pilot looked a lot like the main Thuggee overseer from Temple of Doom.

  1. 3.4 of us (myself, wife – 4 months pregnant & 18 month old son) coming back to Australia from our honeymoon in New Zealand. Our original flight was cancelled after a dust-storm prevented our aircraft from even leaving Sydney to come to NZ. We ended up rushing to the domestic part of Christchurch airport to grab a flight to Auckland, from there though the rain to the international terminal to book onto another flight and then racing through that terminal to get to our flight (jet was an A380 – nice).

When we landed in Sydney we got put straight on a special bus, raced to the domestic terminal there & just made it on the second-last plane out. Due to the dust storm all the flights had been delayed by hours.

Finally get to Canberra at about 11:00pm, turns out our bags are on the last plane for the night landing at 11:30pm. I leave my very tired wife & sleeping son in the terminal to go find my parents who were collecting us. When I get them & the car to the pickup point here is my wife coming out the doors with a group of Australian Federal Police officers who had checked to see if she was OK, the female officer was carrying my son who was still sound asleep on her shoulder & the two male officers had the rest of our luggage :slight_smile: (We sent their commander a nice letter a few days later thanking them).

32

This is a nice (though “fun” is questionable) story about O’Hare in Chicago.

My girlfriend and I were booked on American Airlines from San Francisco to Toronto via O’Hare. Our flight from San Francisco left a little late, and due to weather, we were even later getting into O’Hare. And our Toronto flight was the last one of the night. So when our aircraft touched down in O’Hare, we ran.

Now, as anybody who has been through O’Hare knows, the airport is shaped like a capital letter A. Our flight from San Francisco landed at the bottom of one leg of the A, and the last flight to Toronto that night was leaving from the bottom of the other leg. So, as I said, we ran; and we weren’t the only ones. Up one leg of the A, across the crossbar, and down the other; we ran.

When we got to the bottom of the leg of the A from which our Toronto flight was leaving, we arrived just in time to see the aircraft backing away from the gate. The gate agent was unmoved: no, he could do nothing this night; we could get the first flight in the morning. No, American Airlines was not going to comp us to hotel rooms. We missed our flight. No deal, nohow; you are SOL.

Then he saw how many people were showing up. There must have been thirty of us. And he looked at his computer, and picked up the phone, and very quietly–with his hand over the phone so we couldn’t hear–conferred with somebody.

Then he announced to all of us that the aircraft was coming back to the gate, and could we please have our boarding passes ready, so as to be as efficient as possible. We were, and our flight left–although a little late–from Chicago, and we got to Toronto that night. I was at work the next morning, as planned.

Like I said, this is a nice story. Many thanks to the O’Hare/American Airlines gate agent who managed to call the aircraft back, so I and many others could get to Toronto that night. Your “stretching” of the rules was much appreciated!

33

A colleague and I were at LAX waiting to board Lufthansa to Germany, but first had to pick up an Instapak from a PSA flight with arrival gate quite far from Lufthansa’s departure gate. The PSA arrival was scheduled for almost the exact time of Lufthansa’s departure. Forgoing the Instapak was not an option – it contained my friend’s passport. :smack:

Although we’d spent $1000’s on Lufthansa 1st class tickets, they ignored us, and it was PSA with their $49(?) Instapak service who took care of us, putting us on a little motor-cart to wait for the PSA’s door to open, then racing to Lufthansa’s jet. Someone had had to debark the Lufthansa jet for medical reason; otherwise we’d have missed our flight.

I thought about the day often, regretting not writing a complimentary letter to PSA management. It was a day of other incident as well: coming into LAX, traffic control had directed us and a 747 onto a collision course, an incident I mentioned at SDMB before.

I’ve some other airport memories, including a few unpleasant experiences with U.S. Customs.

34

I used to work for a company that had locations in various small mid-western towns, so I did a lot of flying in and out of little tiny airports. In the pre-9/11 days, Lincoln, Nebraska had the tightest security I’ve ever seen; asked me to name every piece of electronics in my bag, and when I forgot about my electric razor, made me turn it on so they could be sure it wasn’t…well, whatever they thought it might be.

My favorite was flying out of Mason City, Iowa. I had spent the night, and was on the first plane back to Chicago. I got to the airport a little more than an hour before my flight, and the place was pitch black. After 10 or 15 minutes, lights started coming on in the terminal, so I headed in. A gentleman unlocked the front door when he saw me coming, then walked over to the rental car counter to take the keys to my car. After that, he walked over to the check-in counter to print my boarding pass and get me checked in to my flight. I was kind of surprised he didn’t put a pilot’s hat on and fly me to Chicago himself.

It’s actually not the smallest airport I’ve ever flown into or out of (that record goes to the seaplane “terminal” on St. John, USVI), but it was the only time I’d ever seen an airport run by one person.

35

Last year, we were flying out of Seoul to Seville via Paris. We were already a bit tight on time, but just as we got out of the house and on to the main road to catch a taxi, my boyfriend announced that he REALLY HAD TO GO TO THE BATHROOM and ran back up the hill to our apartment. (He later blamed the chicken we had the night before, but I had had the same and I was peachy.) It took him a good 20 minutes to return.

We usually take the airport bus, but the city had recently opened an express train from the city to the airport, which was supposed to take under an hour. So we decided we’d give that a try. But when we got to the station, we discovered that the platform had been built DEEP IN THE BOWELS OF HELL. Seriously, it took us AGES to get down there. That ate up another 15 minutes.

The stupid train let us off in a part of the airport that was pretty much as far away from our check-in counter as was humanly possible. So when we finally come panting up to the counter, the lady tell us she’s sorry, but check-in is closed.

I was really freaking out at this point, because our connecting flight from Paris was not with the same airline, and missing this flight would really screw us over because we wouldn’t be able to reschedule or get a refund for the Paris-Seville flight. Then the check-in lady said she’d check us in JUST THIS ONCE. I wanted to kiss her.

THEN another couple came panting over to the counter, which prompted the lady to say sorry, but she couldn’t do a late check-in for more than two people. WTF? WHYWHYWHYWHY? But it turned out that the other couple had checked in online (which we had tried to do, but for some reason we got a message saying that check in was only possible at the airport for our particular flight) so in the end the nice lady checked us in and we got on the plane by the skin of our teeth.

The only other time we’ve been late was in Thailand. We stayed at a cheap hotel the night before we had to leave and woke up the next morning to find the place empty. No one at reception, no one anywhere, and to make matters worse the water wasn’t working. So feeling extremely out of sorts and stinky we got our stuff together, but we had been depending on the hotel to help us call a cab. We desperately searched the streets but there was not a cab to be found. Finally some random old dude with a car that looked like it would be found in the dictionary under “dilapidated” drove us to the airport for 20 bucks. We managed to get ourselves checked in but the lady informed us that we would have sit separately and that we wouldn’t get any sandwiches. (?)

36

In 2006 I was an avid hobby jeweler and sold my wares at art/music fairs, and I often carried a beading kit that consisted of a canvas bag about the size of a hardcover textbook that unzipped to reveal several layers of individual zippered compartments containing my glass and metal beads, headpins, spacers, etc. and of course several coils of various gauges of wire, along with pliers, tweezers, etc. It contained most of my parts inventory at the time.

I took this kit with me on a trip to visit my parents. Of course I wasn’t going to check it, so it went through security with me. As you might imagine, it lit up the X-ray machine like a Christmas tree, and in each direction I was asked to ahem “please step aside, ma’am.” Both times I said, “I’m guessing you’d like a closer look at my beading kit,” and the screener opened it up and pawed through a bit and sent me on my way. But I had someone waiting on each end so I could hand it off to them and ship it to me, in case for some reason it didn’t pass the TSA.

I can only imagine what it looked like on the X-ray. We’ve got a live one, folks!

37

In 1984 or 1985 flying a puddle jumper from Ft. Smith AR to St Louis. The incoming plane for my lands, passengers get off, then a truck comes and tows the plane away. There’s an announcement about undetermined delay while something mechanical gets fixed. The other people waiting for the flight are mostly suits who need to get to St Louis to make a connection. Most of the sensible guys head back to the ticket desk to sort something out. One guy starts shouting at the gate agent “Where’s that other fucking plane going?” She confirms it also goes to St Louis. He shouts “I need to get on that fucking plane, how do I get on that fucking plane?” She calmly replies that if he goes back to the ticket desk they can see about arranging something. He storms off. She opens the door onto the tarmac, waves at the pilot and he pushes back to take off. When she comes back in she says to nobody in particular “nobody swears at me and gets on an airplane”.

38

A few years back I was in Saragossa’s airport. It doubles (triples?) as an AF base and the airfield used by Spain’s AF College. There was a flight to Kabul announced. A man said “Kabul? I didn’t know there were flights from Saragossa to Kabul?” and his wife answered, pointing “I think it’s their flight, honey…”

What, you mean all those nervous-looking trim people in green Spanish Army uniforms look like they might be going to Kabul? Can’t imagine what gave you the idea.

39

That was you, was it? It’s still there, providing a welcome splash of colour.

40

Here’s my best story.

When I was fifteen, I flew to India. On the way back, I was taking PanAm, on their last few years.

Anyway my uncle got me to the airport at 6 am. At 9 am the flight took off. I fell asleep almost immediately.

At 12 pm I awoke to a strange feeling. I asked my seatmate, and he told me the plane was turning around because it was damaged.

We arrived back at Indira Gandhi. All of the passengers grumbling went off to the hotel. I didn’t know at that age that if the airline fucks up they pay for your hotel. I didn’t have enough money to pay for a hotel (and really had rarely stayed in one) so didn’t know much about it.

I had no rupee coins for the phones, and it being the middle of the day between flights, my area of the airport cleared out pretty quickly. I was alone, with the blue collar workers who I imagined were leering at me (some of them pretty clearly were. India’s weird about women alone sometimes.) I asked this woman at a desk for a rupee coin. In my mind she barked at me and said she couldn’t open her register.

I sat down on a bench and started crying. I was pretty scared. There was no news when the new plane was coming in, and I didn’t know what to do.

A security officer saw me crying and came over and asked me gently what was wrong! (I am SO grateful my parents taught me to speak Hindi fluently). I told him what, and he went over to the lady and berated her for not giving me a coin, and came back with three shiny rupee coins. I thanked him and called my uncle, half in tears. He was very worried and came right back to the airport. At the time I was embarrassed about crying but now I know, it was just a natural reaction.

Anyway it took two days before a new plane came from Karachi. My uncle slept on the couch and called the freakin airline every two hours. I think PanAm went defunct that year or the next.

In our defense, the tickets were super-cheap. :slight_smile:

Another time I was coming back when I was ten, and something was wrong with one of my exit visas. The guy called his manager, who called his manager. The medium manager said to the big manager,
“Jaane do, bachhi hai” “Let her go, she’s just a baby.” And they let me go through no problem.

Then there was the time I was bringing back a dhol (big drum) from India. The guy at US Customs wanted to open it, you know, pull the skin stretched on one side off. I said, why, no one in the States knows how to fix it, you’ll ruin it! He said “You could be smuggling parakeets in here or something.”

I said, “Wouldn’t they be dead parakeets? I mean, it’s not like I can get in there to feed them or give them water!”

He let me go through. Eventually.