A long long time ago in a country far away… I was a graduate student in the UK, flying home for summer break, 1983. It was only my second international flight. My parents booked me a seat on a charter flight from Gatwick to Kennedy. I arrived on time at Gatwick, and got myself checked in properly. There had been reports of delays due to weather in New York the day before, but none of the flights showed any delays. I go through the emigration queue to the waiting area at Gatwick, where I see they’ve updated the flight. Five hour late departure.
I’m a student. I had something like 82p in my pocket. I try calling my parents to warn them, but no one is home to take a collect call. As time passes, the flight is delayed even further, to a 9 hour late departure. I never reach my parents. The only compensation provided was essentially a mercy voucher from Gatwick for 3 pounds.
Back home, my father calls the charter and he’s told the flight is on time. So, he goes from northern New Jersey to Kennedy Airport, only to be told at the airport that the plane hasn’t taken off from London. He goes home to sleep since the estimated arrival time is now 1AM, and it is 4PM.
Finally, the flight lands. It is about 1AM. The bags start appearing at about 2:30AM, maybe one bag every two minutes. There’s no way for me to contact my father to tell him I’m off the plane (no cell phones in 1983!) so he just has to wait, and wait… I finally get my bag and get through customs and immigration at 5AM… It took four hours to get the luggage off the plane.
My parents agreed I could toss the return ticket and fly PeoplExpress to return to grad school three weeks later. That was hassle free.
Tagged as:
delay & cancellation
This is a story from 2007: When I finished school my mother gave me a short city trip to Paris. I packed my baggage with a lot of fashionable clothes since Paris is a real fashion metropolis. As the plane started its approach to land the pilot started a speech which went approximately like this: “Dear passengers, thanks for your confidence, we’re landing now in Paris, but we only have one bag with us. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay in Paris. Your baggage will be sent on soon.”
Everybody was laughing and clapping their hands because they thought it was a joke. I had a window seat and I could see the baggage car driving away with only one bag. I recognized that the pilot’s speech was not a joke. I told this to my mother but she didn’t believe me.
Well I thought, we’ll see. We went to the baggage claim area with all other passengers and waited. “Expected soon” the display told us. After 30 minutes of waiting a passenger went to ask what happened to our baggage. He came back and told everyone that the baggage still was in Stuttgart. Now everybody recognized that it wasn’t a joke. We completed a form and they promised to deliver the baggage this afternoon to our hotel.
The morning after we still didn’t have our baggage, so we bought important things like a toothbrush and shower gel. I had to buy birth control pills in a drugstore, which means I had to explain everything to the druggist in French. But my biggest problem was that I was staying in the fashion metropolis without fashion but in my jogging suit… I bought cheap jeans and a shirt because my money was in my baggage. Every night we washed our underwear in the hotel’s washbowl and slept naked… Then, at the last day of our stay, a wonder happened. The airport called the hotel: our baggage arrived. Thanks… We went to the airport, picked up our baggage and went to check it in. But before doing so, I pulled off all my cheap things and changed into nicer clothes so I could at least have 5 minutes of being in Paris wearing fashion!
From this trip on I never went into a plane without a toothbrush, new underwear, money and birth control pills in my cabin baggage.
Tagged as:
baggage
A few years ago – on a flight from Dallas, Texas to Portland, Oregon the overweight and asleep gentleman next to me urinated on his and, ultimately, on my seat. I promptly stood up – to avoid sitting on a urine-soaked seat, and asked the nearest flight attendant for permission to move to another seat (there were at least three empty seats on the flight). She told me to sit back down and said that, for security reasons, I could not change to another seat. I explained the situation to her again and she told me to sit down and stop complaining or I would be met at the gate by an air marshal. She was becoming angry with me and, taking her threat seriously, I crouched over my seat – doing my best to avoid actually sitting. She then returned – with another flight attendant – and they both informed me that, for my safety, I needed to sit ‘firmly’ in my seat. I explained about the urine to the other flight attendant and she said that that was not her problem and that I needed to sit down and relax. Two other passengers backed up my story – and the flight attendants told them to calm down as well. Eventually I ended up sitting on two folded-up blankets – for over two hours – and just had to tolerate the smell.
I took my story to the check-in desk upon my arrival in Portland – along with one of the passengers who very nicely agreed to support my story. They asked me what it would take to make me happy to which I responded “what would it take to make you happy after you had been forced to sit in somebody else’s urine for over two hours?”
What I eventually got – half of my round-trip ticket refunded. As far as I know, nothing happened to the flight attendants.
I have done everything in my power to avoid flying since – the flight attendants use the air marshal/authorities ploy too often and too easily.
Tagged as:
air marshal,
flight attendant,
odor,
pee,
portly,
seats
I was 13 when I met a passenger who took care of me and treated me like a son. Before I tell my story, I must explain the background situation. I was on a flight from Beijing to San Francisco when engine #1 was on fire. Apparently a passenger discovered this and notified the captain. The captain didn’t know about this problem since there was nothing wrong with the instruments (he later announced this to the passengers). We had no choice but to divert back to Beijing and stay overnight while the aircraft got repaired.
The next morning, we returned to re-check in for our flight at 7am when we discovered that the check-in desks weren’t open. After 30 minutes of discussion with other passengers, we were notified that our flight (United 888) was renumbered to United 888A since another flight was flying out of Beijing numbered United 888. After going through security one more time, we finally managed to board the plane. Although the plane left Beijing uneventfully, I couldn’t sleep because I kept having thoughts of the engine fire from yesterday and the cramped seats didn’t help either.
After we finally arrived in SFO, we were told that we needed to uncheck and re-check our bags to take the connecting United 888 flight to Los Angeles. After check-in, my dad had to separate from us because we had to do extra screening and he didn’t. I was already tired from not getting any sleep so extra screening made me feel more exhausted. After the extra-screening, I boarded the plane feeling sick.
The flight was full and I was seated away from my parents. The woman who sat next to me noticed that I wasn’t looking and was kind enough to ask me if I was OK. I lied to her that I was fine and she continued to read her book. When we began to push back, she removed a tin of candy from her bag and gave herself a piece before offering me one. She told me that it would help my ears from the air pressure and it would make me feel a little better. I politely refused her offer and she told me to call her if I don’t feel comfortable.
After take-off, I couldn’t hold it back and I vomited in my air sickness bag. When the woman who sat next to me saw this, she reached into her bag and handed me some tissues and told me I should clean myself. Then, she pressed the call button and told the flight attendant to get me a cup of water. After I dealt with my mess I thanked her and told her about my flight story from Beijing (the one I mentioned above). She handed over her air sickness bag and told me to use it if necessary.
For the remaining thirty minutes of the flight I managed to get some shut eye and felt a lot better when we arrived in LAX. Before we left the plane, my father and I thanked her for taking care of me. She hoped for the best of me and left the plane.
Tagged as:
pilot,
united airlines,
vomit
