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!
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.
Sorry to hear you missed your flight. It sucks but hopefully it won’t ruin your plans.
As for the story:
It was 15 years ago, my parents, my two siblings, and me were about to travel to Canada to visit our aunt. For all of us, it was our first ever transatlantic flight. We were all so excited about it, that none of us could catch a bit of sleep the day before leaving.
It required 5h of travel to catch the plane in the capital, so we had to leave at like 4 am to be on time for it. But somehow we manage to do it and arrive on time at the airport.
Excitation is at its maximum, finally our big trip is around the corner. We go to the check in desk, cue for a good a hour, and once our turn come, get asked for our passport. We all look at my father that start frenetically look in his pockets, then handbags to find our passport. But no sign of them. He start sweating heavily, ask my mother if she kept them. No, not with her neither. Big panic moment, everybody shouting, undoing all the luggages in order to find them. But nothing. We forgot our passport. No way to catch the plane.
Our father go back to our place, 5h away from the airport, while we stayed in a hotel for the night. Turns out the passport were on my parent shelf. Just one story higher than were they always were. My mother being quite short did’t see them and assumed my father had them.
We went back to the airport on the next day to see what we could do to save our trip. We got lucky as we got access to another plane, for free, and got upgraded to first class as a bonus, due to 5 other passengers missing their flight ! But we had 5 mins to catch it. The run though the check-in, security, the terminal gates was quite epic to fathom !
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.
Travelling from Austria to Croatia - got to the airport at 8pm for our 11 o’clock flight. Initially wasn’t concerned when our flight wasn’t showing on the boards. Became increasingly worried as time went on.
Spoke to the desk and were told the only flight to Croatia was 11AM that day… (Not 11pm)
Spent the night sleeping in the airport while waiting to check in to a airport hotel the next day as the next available flight to Croatia was 2 days after our original flight.
Used my bag as a pillow and accidentally broke some souvenirs we had bought. Cost us an extra $500 each in total for new flights and accomm as we had no travel insurance.
Sorry to hear you missed your flight - hope your experience isn’t too rough!
Sheesh, one thing after another! I’m sorry you had to go through that. Your poor souvenirs too.
Mine in comparison isn’t so bad. I overslept (I’m a dumbass, I missed like 5 alarms) but fortunately the airline called and said they’d rebook my flight. So after a very panicked morning rush to the airport, I’m back home now killing time while I wait for my evening flight.
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.
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
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.
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.
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…
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.
College freshman flying back home for the summer. Not used to flying. Got to my gate about half hour before boarding. Hungry. Went to closest restaurant a couple gates away, got a burrito and ate at a table while listening to music with headphones. Lost track of time. That burrito had my full attention. Missed all the overhead calls for me. Plane had departed by the time I casually walked back to my gate.
This was back in line 2009. I was trying to fly cross country back to home (ATL-SFO) right at the end of the holiday break. Like the last day before people had to go back to work, so it was crazy busy. I got a ride to the airport from some friends who had a later flight, but we left early enough that we would have plenty of time for me to be early for mine too. But then there was a massive like 18 car pileup on the freeway and we were stuck in traffic between exits with nowhere to go. We sat there for 2 hours before we got going, and that was enough to eat up my buffer and make me miss my flight.
I got to the airport check in desk and told them what happened, and they said they would try to get me out on standby on one of the other flights. This was at ATL, trying to go back to SFO so plenty of options right? Well it was such a crazy busy travel day that I kept getting put on standby but all the flights were full. I needed someone to no-show for their seat before I could take it, and there were plenty of other people trying to go standby too. At the time I had no airline status so I was at the back of the line for priority to get a seat.
I got so close a few times. By the end of the day I had been issued 8 boarding passes for standby flights. On 6 of them I never got past the gate. On one of them they cleared me in and I was walking down the jet bridge before the original passenger showed up and they ran down to tell me that my spot was no longer available. One of them I made it all the way to a seat before I got yanked back off the plane. The very late original passenger sheepishly passed me in the jet bridge, both of us being escorted by gate agents but in opposite directions.
It was nighttime now. I had told the customer support agents that I would be happy getting to any airport in CA, or even anywhere along the way. Finally they said they had a flight for me to DFW with a confirmed seat on it, and then they could get me a confirmed flight back to CA the following morning. Shit, I’ll take it. Get me out of ATL, and get me out of standby hell.
I made it to DFW and got some shitty hotel near the airport (not comped). I had spent so long in ATL listening hearing the din of an airport and fragments of conversations as people walked by me (I didn’t have good NC headphones back in 09). As I was lying in the hotel trying to sleep I was literally hearing voices in my head, unintelligible pieces of airport conversations that my brain was making up. It felt like I was going crazy. The standby demons had won.
Thankfully I finally fell asleep and got a few hours of zzzs before heading back to the airport and catching the early flight to CA. What a mess. I hope your situation isn’t nearly as painful!
Add comment