My flight got canceled out of O’Hare once, they changed my connecting flight’s gate and it happened to be the same one my final flight was leaving from so there was no way I’d make it on. There wasn’t another flight until the following evening so they comped me a hotel and gave me some meal vouchers. When I walked into the hotel I was greeted by hundreds of furries. The Midwest Furfest was going on at the convention center nearby.
Didn’t get any email that the flight time was changed to 3 hours earlier.
App on the watch told me that I should go to the airport as soon as I woke up, but I ignored it.
When we got to the airport we didn’t see our flight on the screen. We went to the counter and got strange faces from staff. “Sir your flight departed 2h ago”.
After 10 minutes of waiting with not much information we get a flight that’s departing in 20 minutes for no extra cost.
It wasn’t a direct flight like the missed one, but we arrived to our final destination an hour later than initially planned.
I checked how could I avoid this in the future and noticed that the pdf with boarding pass had the updated flight time, but the email that included this boarding pass had wrong time. Booked via kiwi because airlines website had troubles with charging my credit card for some reason.
I had to drive 2h hours to the nearest major airport. It took me over 4 hours to get there. I missed the flight by a few minutes. I waved to my Plane as it was leaving the Gate.
Next flight was 1 hour and a few hundred Euros later…
My flight had to turn around because of frost issues. 3h later we left Jersey again for London and obviously I missed my flight. The airport was going to shut down pretty soon and the company only made arrangements at the last minute for a hotel and a taxi. I took the first flight back to my country at like 6am, it was a long day afterwards.
The year is 2016, I'm teaching English in Japan, and the Olympics is on TV with Nigeria vs. Japan in Soccer.
I'm normally not into Scoccer or any kind of TV sport for that matter, but I caught the game early on, and Japan was neck and neck with Nigeria. For some reason I wanted to see it play out. JAPAN scores! YES! then I remember where I was and what I was doing, and my train to Sapporo had left 30 minutes ago...
Luckily I was able to schedule another train, and what time I got there didn't really matter, but I had to wait several hours for it to arrive. Japan ended up losing 5 to 4.
I was too embarrassed to be upset lol. Plus I was like 19? The ticket lady hooked me up. I couldn’t afford another ticket at the time. I think she got me credit and I paid the difference.
I did the same thing! My mom had booked the flights for us and I thought we were flying back on Friday. She had booked Thursday instead so when I called to check-in the flight had already left. The agent was really cagey about it too and didn’t outright tell me the flight left that day. Weird and expensive af and now I’ve got a lifelong complex.
Somehow I missed a flight while I was at the gate. Mind you it was a small plane. I still don't understand it to this day. I was sitting at the gate waiting for them to announce boarding or watch the sign change. Nothing the whole time I was there.
Finally about 20 minutes after we were supposed to leave I get up and ask the desk staff and they tell me the plane left.
I didn't understand how this had happened and apparently neither did they. I didn't see anyone board the plane, there were no announcements or notifications.
I have had this happen to me.
Super early flight. Maybe 6am or something. And I even arrived quite early. too early, it would seem. I sit down in front of the gate and just wait. Now, you might be thinking, he fell asleep! No, I was awake. But I wear Noise-Canceling Headphones when flying. And I missed the announcement about a last minute gate change. By the time I got suspicious about why the gate staff hadn’t arrived yet it was too late. The new gate was quite far away. Despite an early morning sprint through the airport I was too late.
Another amazingly stupid mishap I have experienced while traveling is that I mixed up the return date by a month. If I remember correctly I was booking a return flight at the end of February. The UI of the little calendar that pops up while picking your flights somehow automatically move to the next month of March. I was going to stay a week (or maybe 5 days or whatever). So, in my mind I was only looking at the day. Let’s say the outbound flight was on the 23rd of February. I was going to stay a week. The calendar for the return leg automatically moved to March. So I click on “next month” and pick the 2nd. But not of March, of April now.
You probably explained the unexplained. A gate change would explain why even the staff were confused, as they were just there for whatever other flight was assigned to that gate.
Not an interesting story but: American Airlines doesn’t know how much time it should book for a connection at Dallas between their own flights. Avoid both, the airline and the airport
Thankfully I have never missed a flight, but one time for a moment I thought I had.
When I purchase tickets and get an email from the airline, gmail will summarize the flight details at the top of the mail. So it adds a blurb on top that isn't part of the actual mail. It usually works but one time it set the departure date as the date I received my email, not the departure date in the contents of the email.
For a moment I thought I had messed up when ordering the tickets, but reading the contents calmed me down.
Another almost-miss. I visited a friend in Germany, and the final leg home was from “Dusseldorf Weser” airport, which I naïvely assumed was like “London Heathrow”, and just the full name of Dusseldorf airport where I’d flown in.
Lucky, I got there 3h in advance, and when I couldn’t find the Ryan Air (yep!) counter, information filled me in. …One mad taxi rush across the city, then a bus I would’ve missed if it wasn’t late, and I got to this little airport way out of town 5min before the gate closed!
10 mins later, a group of guys got on the plane. They’d had a beer waiting for the Ryan Air counter to show up at Dusseldorf, and realised too late - got a taxi all the way to Weser arriving 5 min after gate closing. Luckily they were allowed to board anyway!
Someone once told me “if you’ve never missed a flight, you’re spending too much time in airports”. I think about that a lot in a lot of other contexts - sometimes being too safe comes with more of a cost than the risk!
I think this is terrible advice for most people. You only need to spend like an hour in the airport to avoid missing a flight. Most people don’t fly often enough to get much actual gain from pushing this boundary. The only person I knew who would push the envelope like this was someone who flew every week for work. That makes sense to me, because you’re saving two hours every week for years. If you’re only flying a few times a year just pack a book and ensure you make your flight on time.
I’ve been on like six flights in my life. I am absolutely not spending too much time in airports by not missing a flight. What a fucking out of touch thing to say.
Hungover after my wedding. We took too long at the hotel breakfast and had to drive about an hour to get to the airport.
Tried to buy a new ticket at the airport for my honeymoon and the agent laughed at me. They don’t sell tickets at the airport… So I had to stand in front of them, buy a ticket on my phone, then approach the agent. Who knew?
Foreigner flying out of Chicago, and no one explained that the pass I was given at check in wasn’t my boarding pass. My flight is almost boarded before I realised that a seat number wasn’t printed on the pass. I went to the counter to find out what I’m supposed to do, and the flight had been overbooked.
Neither of these are normal where I’m from. You get the boarding pass with your seat when you check in, and flights are never deliberately overbooked.
Add comment