Just out of curiosity, do you remember what color were the cops wearing? One of the two branches most commonly found in airports has a good reputation and I’ve always found them helpful, the other ones a very bad one and some of them seem proud of it. I’m wondering whether the ones you encountered were true to their reputation or not.
Sorry we inflicted those on you.
In 1979 all DC10 flights were suspended for a while, due to an unexplained accident. I flew on one shortly after flights were resumed. As we waited at the gate to board, some of the passengers looked out the window and remarked that it was a DC10. One woman insisted that that would be impossible: DC10 flights were suspended. “That’s a DC10, lady” was the answer, but she didn’t believe it.
While we were taxiing to the runway the woman had a chance to examine the seatpocket literature and finally came to the conclusion that she was indeed on a DC10 about to takeoff. Soon an announcement came over the speaker: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are returning to the terminal. One of our passengers has decided not to travel with us.” There were loud complaints throughout the cabin. I was seated close enough to the woman to see her expression.
By the time we returned to the terminal she’d changed her mind again, or perhaps she was too embarrassed to disembark. I rang my stewardess-call button and asked, since we’d returned to the terminal, if I could make a quick trip to the gift shop. It took a second for her to realize I was joking, but then she said she’d relay my request to the captain.
I have lots of scary or grrrrrrr worthy airport stories, but I’ll skip them.
All three members of VunderFam were headed to LA via a layover in San Francisco for a family reunion. It was roughly 9 PM when we landed in SF, so it was 0100 at home in Indianapolis. My then three year old son, never a wallflower, manages to find another precocious preschooler to play with while my wife and I did everything possible to stay awake.
About 2 years after that, VWife’s father died. We, sans kiddo, flew down to Nawlins do next of kin stuff, and in a lighter moment, we found a 4 foot long rubber alligator in a gift shop that he would go crazy over. After boarding the plane to return home, we put the gator in an overstuffed overhead bin, and thought nothing more of it. Later, the flight attendant was doing her obligatory checks, and opened the bin to be faced with the alligator. She let out a blood curdling scream and jumped high enough to bang her head on the bin door. What made even funnier was she saw me carry it on and knew it was a toy.
I fly in Portland from Narita once, and transferred to Salt Lake to visit family. The flight to SLC was on a small plane, and instead of a jetway, we had to walk down to the tarmac, and go over to the plane. OK, fine, I’m jetlagged, but that’s normal. I hadn’t gotten any sleep over the Pacific and I just wanted to go to sleep.
On the plane, across the isle and one row behind me was a Japanese mother, her baby and the grandmother. They were very excitedly talking about visiting the father. I was sort of dozing, and their conversation was fading in and out. I was a little annoyed because I just wanted to get some sleep, but you can’t really be pissed at people for just being excited.
The door were just closing, when the mother told her baby that they would be in San Francisco soon. That woke me up.
I turned around and asked, in Japanese, where they were going and they said San Francisco. So, I called the flight attendants. It winds up that their flight was on the plane at the next gate, and they had walked over to the wrong plane. Fortunately, the other plane also hadn’t departed yet, so they were able to get on the correct flight, and better yet, I was able to get some sleep.
Two years ago, my colleagues and I were in Vegas for a trade show, and our connecting flight was canceled. The next fight they had was two days later. We needed to be back in Tokyo as soon as possible, and we couldn’t get connecting flights anywhere. It was the typical uncertainty, were first they may be able to do, then they can’t, then they maybe able, but not. Lots of people milling around the desk.
Finally, I found a redeye that night to JFT, and then a morning flight to Tokyo. It only put us one day later in Tokyo, but at least it got us back.
There were about 20 Japanese who were in the same situation (including two of our customers, but they decided to enjoy the vacation). I spend an hour on the phone with a customer service agent finding routes and seats for everyone, while translating back and forth. We got many of the people over on connecting flight through different cities (there were more of us in my group, so pairs had an easier time). One woman and her mother, nether of which spoke any English at all, decided it was easier to stay in Vegas for the extra two days rather than try a difficult new route.
The only one I didn’t help was the pushy doctor who kept butting into line loudly saying “I’m a doctor so I have to be back.” Fortunately the crew took care of her or I would have made arrangements to have her fly though Algeria.
Quite a few years ago I was in the Caracas, Venezuela airport at the desk for AVIANCA (Colombian airline). I was traveling with a coworker from Argentina, and in front of us were two women trying to speak with the ladies behind the counter.
The women were Germans who spoke no Spanish or English; the airline employees spoke no German or English, my coworker spoke English and Spanish but not German, and I know only English plus a minimum of German.
I discovered the ladies were trying to find seats to get back to Europe. In English I relayed their request to my coworker, who passed it along in Spanish across the desk. We hopped skipped and jumped languages like that for 10 minutes and eventually found no available seats for the German women, but I finally had a chance to put my German class to some good use.
Didn’t that scenario become an episode of I Love Lucy?
When I was little (between ages of 6 and 8, I guess), my parents were divorced and lived in different parts of the country (my mom, my brother - 3 years older - , and I lived in Milwaukee, and my dad was in Seattle).
I don’t know exactly how many times, maybe twice per year for 3 years, my brother and I would fly to Seattle to be with our dad for a week or so. He worked for Northwest Airlines, so my brother and I flew on stand-by (I don’t think we ever got bumped), but we flew by ourselves. Granted, our mom took us to the gate, and my dad always met us at the gate, but most times we would have to transfer in MSP, or at least have a layover for a bit, which meant my brother was in charge of getting 2 little kids where we needed to be. I remember we would go play arcade games for an hour or so, run to McDonalds, etc, and then just sit around bored to tears. I have no way to know for sure, but I’d guess the longest wait we had was probably 3-4 hours. I think flight attendants must have known our story and it got relayed by gate agents, but I’d be shocked if kids do that much anymore, if at all, especially post 9/11, where only passengers can get to the gate.
I guess there really wasn’t much of in the way of other options, and I never thought much of it 25 years ago, but when I picture what it would be like for my 8-year old and 5-year old nephews wandering through an airport by themselves, I’m astonished this was allowed and that my brother and I stayed out of trouble.
Probably my favorite was when my wife and I were flying from Lanai to Honolulu. All 8 passengers have boarded, when an employee gets on the plane and asks in his singsongy Hawaiian patois if someone left their ham sandwich in the boarding area. One guy raises his hand. Then the employee asks if he can have it. The previous sandwich owner says yes. Much chuckling.
I was on a plan once that had to turn back because of a mechanical problem, something had overheated.
The plane pulled back into the airport and a mechanic that looked suspisciously like Willie Nelson boarded and went into the cockpit.
Then the pilot came on and announced that the mechanic had determined that the problem was a bad sensor…at that point the technician in me was thinking…“uhoh, it’s NEVER really a bad sensor” but as a mere passenger I didn’t get to voice my opinion.
Sure enough, we took off, hit cruising altitude and had to turn back, again.
The airline was very good to us, they gave us all $300 vouchers and seats on the next flight, they even paid for an overnight hotel for those who were too freaked out to fly that day…
But by the time the next flight went all the airport food shops were closed and people were complaining about hunger. So the folks at USAir ordered a few dozen pizzas from Dominos and managed to serve them on the flight…which was more difficult than it sounds but it worked and I loved them for it.
I also was involved in one of those trapped passenger disasters you read about on the news ( this one actually DID make the news ) and to add insult to injury by the time my plane got to disembark ( at Dallas, which was my connection point ) all the flights for the next 4 days were booked. The only choice was to get on stand-by…and there were over 100 people ahead of me on the stand-by list.
So I got to the airport at 5AM the next day and began playing the stand-by game. It was a pretty desparate situation, the gates were so crowded with people hoping for stand-by that there was a lot of pushing and stuff and the local police had to come in to maintain order and there were crying women giving the gate agents sob stories about needing medications, dying parents…pretty much anything they could think of that might get them on a plane…and it wasn’t working.
I stepped back and assessed the situation. What they were doing was putting all 125 or so standbys on the first flight out, then after that flight closed they rolled all the stand-by’s over to the next flight.
So, I checked the board and noticed that flights number 3 and 4 had departure times that were only fifteen minutes apart. Flight 4 was also on the other side of the airport ( and DFW is a BIG airport ).
So, I said to myself, “I’ve got an idea and I’m going to see if I can pull it off. Screw flight #3, I’m still #79 on the stand-by list, that one’s not happening” So I took a tram ride across the airport to the gate assigned to flight #4. It was a diifferent world, everyone was quiet and calm and you would never know about the chaos on the other side of the airport. I simply walked up to the gate and asked to be put on stand-by for the flight. By the time the long master stand-by list rolled over to flight 4,followed by the hysterical potential passengers I had already been issued a boarding pass and was safely down the jetway. Boy, did I get some dirty looks from stand-by passengers that recognized me from before.
This one may not sound like much, but at the time I felt like I was the Queen Of the Whole Freakin’ World for pulling this off.
And I’ve spent way too much time at DFW, so much that I knew which of the dozens of gift shops had the BEST veggie snack pack ( they all had slightly different stuff )…taking the tram across the airport to buy one was a good way to kill time, too.
Flew with Mick Foley (Wrestler) from Newark to Houston. Nice guy, had lots of funny stories. Kids were coming up and asking for his autograph. When I got to Houston I went to a bar to eat before my next flight. figured I’d get nachos. They brought me such a huge plate of food I just looked at the bartender and burst out laughing. And I’m a big guy. Seriously, this could’ve fed at least 4 people, easy. WTH is with Houston?
Flew with Maya Angelou on the way to Boise. Lovely lady, sat right next to me. The woman in the row ahead of us recognized her and then tried to to discuss poetry with her until I finally looked over and said “Ma’am, you look tired, are you okay?” And she said “Oh yes, it’s been a long day.” which finally got the other passenger to STFU and leave her alone.
I was at Dulles after a number of years in Iraq and some jackass had his ringtone set to the Duck and Cover alarm. This is an alarm that goes off when incoming IDF is detected. You can listen to it here: Free Ringtones and Wallpapers - ZEDGE™ Well it goes off and me and about five people nearby cringe or flinch and ALL of us are giving this guy dirty looks after. Wanted to punch him sooooooooo bad. :mad:
Had one of my flights home from Iraq via Frankfurt turn into a nightmare. Busted planes, whole nine yards. I’m sitting in the little people pen they put you in just before you board at Frankfurt and some guy calls me over. I’m sure I’m about to be bumped… and I was… to first class! Win! Slept like a baby almost the whole flight. 
I have probably logged 500k miles or more in my career. At this point most planes and airports are a blur. Oh, and in Dubai you can pay like 220 bucks to enter a 1 in 5000 chance to win a million bucks. It’s a raffle so that’s not gambling and is apparently okay. /shrug
Regards,
-Bouncer-
The sequel to my wallet-stolen-in-the-Madrid-airport story:
The following year, I returned to Spain, this time determined to not have any problems (this time wearing an around-the-neck wallet and getting my Euros in advance. I went through customs, got my luggage, and headed for the taxi area. Nothing bad was going to happen this time.
As I was headed for the taxis, I all of a sudden heard some people running. Then a woman screamed, then a siren going off, more people running and people yelling. I made it to the taxis, got into the first one, and told the driver where I was headed. As he drove, he was on the phone continuously, speaking Spanish, which I don’t understand. We started to encounter emergency vehicles and sirens and road blocks. Traffic became almost gridlocked.
At one point, the driver turned to me and said, “terrorist attack at the airport.” I had already noticed a column of black smoke in a particular direction. And I couldn’t help thinking about the horrible attack at Madrid’s Atocha train station a few years previously.
We finally made it to my hotel. When I got to the lobby, there were several people standing around, watching a TV. As soon as I got up to my room, I turned on the TV (CNN or BBC), and discovered that it hadn’t been a terrorist attack, but a plane crash. A plane taking vacationers to the Islands crashed while taking off. There were only a handful of survivors. The victims’ charred bodies had to be DNA tested to identify them. Last I heard, there were some they couldn’t identify.
Here is Wiki’s account of the crash.
During my entire stay in Madrid, the crash was all that was on TV and the papers. And all the flags were at half-mast.
Other than that, I had a wonderful trip.
A few miles from the ceasefire line, in far northern India. Due to some incidents in town the Indian army had imposed a curfew. There were no taxis, as everyone was confined to their homes.
We were due to fly out on the once daily flight. From a converted airforce base, up in the thin thin air, where they can’t land in cloud cover, the runway is barely long enough, and you have to bank hard left, at liftoff to avoid the monastery and mountain!
When we asked the armed soldier, standing in the centre, of the only road to the airport, what we should do, he promptly stopped the next truck, (few and far between!), put us in the cab, and instructed the driver!
Once at the airport, do to the troubles, security was tight. Our luggage was arrayed on the tarmac, beside the plane, with us, and was not put on board, until we touched it. Then we were each frisked fully before getting into the plane. You need to understand that this was India, none of this was well organized or smooth, to put it mildly.
Only to find the plane won’t start. You can hear them trying the engines, but nothing. So now the entire process has to go into reverse, which takes forever. We all have to hitchhike back into a closed up town.
Returning to our guesthouse, we are surprised to discover the proprietors, an entire family, gone. The other confused tourists know nothing as the town is effectively shut down. One of the younger sons eventually turns up briefly, but is very tight lipped about what’s happening.
Next day proceeds much as the one I’ve described, right up to getting the plane started. When it won’t start this time, they simply jump start it, with a cable from the plane that flew in yesterday. :eek:Who knew you could even do such a thing, yikes!
Compared to the four day Indian bus journey, on dodgey mountain roads, it had taken to reach Leh, it seemed a very short flight, over the Himalaya, and back to Jammu. The is was a spectacular flight on a crystal clear day, the view too breathtaking to put into words, truly.
All kinds of weird and wonderful adventure, getting into the air, and an awe inspiring ending. Definitely one of my more memorable moments in India.
I encountered a similar situation during one of my trips in Italy in the mid-90s; unfortunately I don’t recall off the top of my head the airport we were flying out of when this happened. My husband and I were flying back to the US, and we didn’t speak much Italian (we got by on phrase books and some luck) but had no problems navigating the airport to go home. Some things like gate number designations and US city names aren’t hard to figure out. Or so we thought.
This airport required you to go down to the tarmac and hop a little shuttle to actually get to your plane. We were seated on the plane when a fellow American woman walked up, looked at me, and told me I was in her seat. I replied that no, this was indeed my seat. She showed me her ticket, displaying the correct seat number, wrong destination, and I just told her, “This plane is going to (whatever correct airport, maybe it was JFK).” She looked shocked and spoke to a flight attendant, then quickly hustled off the plane. The only thing I can think is that she didn’t see a shuttle waiting near the foot of the jetway she walked out of, but did a few jetways down, not realizing that it was for a totally different plane because it was a different gate there.
Sounds like Leonardo di Vinci (Fumencino) at Rome. Naples is similar except only one story, and they require you to ride a bus a total distance of about 25ft around the nose of the aircraft. Then you get off the bus and board the aircraft.
Regards,
-Bouncer-
I recall flying the infamous ValuJet from college (Atlanta) to home (DC) one time. There had been an ice storm in Atlanta and boarding was temporarily delayed because they had to de-ice the wings. Once we boarded the plane and sat for a while, the captain made the announcement that the plane wouldn’t start. They brought out a machine that could somehow jumpstart the plane, and we finally got on our way…but I never felt terribly secure about flying them after that.
A brief funny moment from the waiting area of some US airport (can’t remember which one)–for quite a long time, I watched a skinny older woman do bizarre yoga-esque poses on and around her chair. I understand stretching between flights, but she did things like lift both legs off the floor, pressing her nose to knees while her butt still remained on the seat. There was a performance vibe to the whole thing, and she was clearly attracting the attention of other onlookers as well. When she got to the front of the boarding line, she just about fell on the woman checking boarding passes and they kept her from boarding due to her level of intoxication…she got deeply combative and upset with them over this, and the airport cops came to take her away.
That must have been it, as in Italy I’ve only flown into/out of Milan and Rome. Thanks for the memory jog.
The first made me think of ETA’s T4 attack (a bomb set off in the parking lot of the new terminal; two people dead), but that was 2006. I can’t find a good reference for it in English.
Sometimes I wonder how do we manage to still have tourists come visit - some people here like fireworks too much 
I was walking through O’Hare, having just gotten off a plane from Boston, transferring to one to Kansas City. I heard an announcement over the PA system: “Mr Smith, return to gate 13 to retrieve your satchel. Mr Smith, please return to gate 13 to retrieve your black satchel.” And I had the perfect reply about the famous Black, Satchel Paige. And I was completely alone.
This is exactly how we negotiated the prices for our wedding photos in Thailand - except the languages were English, Cantonese and Thai.
And we got a bargain, about $700USD for two painting sized portraits, 100 photos, negatives, a 6" x 9" album, a 12" x 15" album, two 4 r albums.
Actual photo taking was a full day affair with 6 different sets of clothing (casual, bridal, ballroom, thai, traditional chinese and japanese)
Leaving on a 10th Anniversary trip with my wife we got to the gate and grabbed a seat by the window to watch the planes move around. The luggage cart arrives before the plane does and the ground crew is obviously bored. One of the crew reaches into the baggage cart and pulls out our suitcase and proceeds to work out with it. Bench presses, squats, you name it. We were highly amused, and even managed to get video of it.
When we got to Tampa after that flight, the car company had run out of compact cars and offered us a choice of a Mustang convertible or a Corvette. That was a nice upgrade. We spent far more time driving around than we had intended.