Odds & Ends Stories

They Lost My Son!

November 24, 2009 Odds & Ends Stories

My son flew from New England to North Carolina on Continental. He was 13 at the time. I paid $15.00 to book the flight by phone (you can’t do it online) and $100.00 extra for Continental to take him on and off the plane.  When the plane landed in NC, my son did as he [...]

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Child’s Second Flight A Nightmare

November 24, 2009 Odds & Ends Stories

I had my second flying experience when I was 7 or 8. We were visiting my sister in Missouri, so we flew out of Pittsburgh because it was closest to our home in Pennsylvania. The flight out was nice, but the flight back was a nightmare. There was a foot of snow dropped on Pennsylvania [...]

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A Panoply Of Problems

November 19, 2009 Odds & Ends Stories

My son and I were flying to his great-grandmother’s funeral. He was 11 at the time and I was 7 months pregnant. Due to the fact that we bought the tickets the day before, we were pulled aside at security for a special search. They separated my son and I and frisked both of us [...]

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Sleeping Pill Stupor

November 12, 2009 Odds & Ends Stories

It wasn’t really a hellish flight, but its a great in-air story!! I was heading home to Sarasota FL, from a direct flight from Israel. I was lucky enough to get some prescription sleeping pills for the 12 hour flight. I took them as I got on the plane and according to the instructions on [...]

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Middle Seat Hell

November 11, 2009 Odds & Ends Stories

At the time I worked for a marketing firm. I was just starting out and so I got to do the jobs that no one else wanted. This time I was flying around the west coast, stopping in each and every airport interviewing travelers about new travel products. If spending all day in nothing but [...]

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Olympic Sprint, Suffocated, Lost Bags

November 1, 2009 Odds & Ends Stories

My flight from hell was a trip from San Diego to Budapest. My initial flight to Amsterdam was fairly standard and uneventful. However, upon landing in Amsterdam is when the “fun” began. I had approximately two or three hours I think to switch planes. But because I was switching to a local airline from Hungary, I [...]

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Sinister Object In The Sky

October 31, 2009 Odds & Ends Stories

I’ve often wondered if any airline passengers of faith have seen strange or sinister objects in the sky. Many years ago, on a Honolulu to Papatee (Tahiti) flight, I was peering mindlessly out of the windscreen into the moonlit night sky when something strange caught my eye. Borrowing First Navigation Officer T. Nolte’s binoculars, I [...]

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Escape From A War Zone

September 23, 2009 Odds & Ends Stories

This story never really made it to “Flight from Hell” status, but it contained all the stress levels of my worst trips ever and could have easily slid to a hellish trip at any point. I would say it was more of a “Flight from a slightly unsettling place,” but interesting none the less. My [...]

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Tinkle Ticks Off Traveler

September 15, 2009 Odds & Ends Stories

I boarded a flight on Continental in which when I arrived to my seat the cushion was pulled out and had a giant wet spot. I walked against the stream to get to the flight attendant to let her know. She told me that maintenance was changing out the seat. I waited quite a while [...]

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The Pre- And Post- Flight From Hell

September 14, 2009 Odds & Ends Stories

This is not so much about a hellish flight, because the flight was fine, it was the getting to and from the flight that was hell.  Do you know how, when there is an accident, the investigators rarely find a single proximate cause?  Instead, they find a chain of improbable events that conspired to eventually [...]

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