Your worst airport travel experience

[Enhance]

Like the thread title says, what is your worst airport travel experience?

 

On the way back from Puerto Vallarta Monday, I was the only person in my family who was unable to check in for my Delta flight 24 hours ahead of time (the Delta app is terrible... by the way). So, we get to the airport early, and we find out I've been randomly selected for the dreaded SSSS designation which means (yay) my TSA pre-check won't be active on any of the flights AND I get the 'privilege' of submitting for a pre-boarding inspection before I leave Mexico. Of course, they don't tell me any of this until I actually get to the airport.

 

I mean, I spent hundreds of dollars on applications and travel expenses to get a Global Entry card, but, I digress...

 

I then ended up being forced to check my carry-on to leave Mexico (even though half the bins were empty), followed by sitting in the last row of the plane by the bathrooms (which is the worst) while my family sat near the front, all while a 6-month old child screamed for 3 1/2 hours.

 

About the only good things that happened were a) my global entry card did at least get me through customs in five minutes and b) a Delta employee on our flight to Omaha noticed I was the only person in my group (yet again) shoved at the back of the plane and they moved me next to my wife since there were open seats.

[RavHuskr]

Coming back from our honeymoon in Jamaica was supposed to fly into Chicago but they were getting 6 inches of rain.  Instead fly to Dallas.  Get to hate in Dallas to fly home and gate change clear on the other side of the airport.  This happened 2 more times before we finally get out on our plane.  At this point we've been up 16 hours with another 3 hours on the plane and an hour car ride home.

[B.B. Hemingway]

Mine is kind of boring.

 

I was helping my grandpa re-roof a barn when I was in high school, and the gauge "tin" material being used was quite slippery, even dry. We were flirting with an oncoming storm, but kept working at my grandpa's insistence. When it finally started raining he suggested that I should, now, probably head down. Well the surface was wet (obviously), and on my way down I lost my footing, and  I went 'flying' off the barn and 15' down to a not-so-soft ground.... I've never been on a plane.

[krc1995]

2013. My Dallas based flight crew put my family and maybe 50 other people on a flight from Lafayette La to Dallas knowing full well that there was significant weather pending and that all of our connecting flights would be canceled. But left we did

 

The weather moved in much faster than anticipated and the 50 minute flight turned into about six hours of hell. While in the air, tornados touched down at the Dallas airport and of course we couldn’t  land, so we fly in a square for some time and we land somewhere, like Abilene and sit for hours. Take off, get up for awhile, and then the announcement comes from the c$%kpit that we are going back to Abilene because we’re effin almost out of gas. Get back up in the air and fly through a bunch of black clouds and it is the most turbulent thing I’ve ever been through.  My son was 7 and I was nauseous for him. He handled well, but looked at me when the plane was rocking like a shrimp boat in the gulf and slammed the window shut. Talk about helpless

 

landed. An hour to disbark. Connecting flight to Omaha missed and we can’t reschedule until Sunday(it’s thursday) no rental cars available and the only hotel room was a 20-30 cab ride, but of course they refuse to get our luggage. We stayed in the hotel and were able to get a rental car to drive our humble selves home picking up our luggage at the Lafayette airport

 

the worst part- that trip was to see my daughter graduate from UNO and we couldn’t make it 

[JJ Husker]

That's effed up @krc1995. Now I feel bad sharing how, on a flight from Denver to Vegas we had to deice 3 times before taking off. It was a friggin blizzard, we deice once, are held on the taxiway too long so have to go back and deice again, then we sit forever and they take us back to the gate to switch crews because they're past their time limit or something. Then we have to refuel, go deice again and finally take off about 5 hours late. It worked out well in Vegas though. We were so late they had filled all the types of rooms we were supposed to be in and all they could give us was the penthouse suite. So we got a huge nice room out of the deal.

[teachercd]

4 hours ago, Enhance said:

Like the thread title says, what is your worst airport travel experience?

 

On the way back from Puerto Vallarta Monday, I was the only person in my family who was unable to check in for my Delta flight 24 hours ahead of time (the Delta app is terrible... by the way). So, we get to the airport early, and we find out I've been randomly selected for the dreaded SSSS designation which means (yay) my TSA pre-check won't be active on any of the flights AND I get the 'privilege' of submitting for a pre-boarding inspection before I leave Mexico. Of course, they don't tell me any of this until I actually get to the airport.

 

I mean, I spent hundreds of dollars on applications and travel expenses to get a Global Entry card, but, I digress...

 

I then ended up being forced to check my carry-on to leave Mexico (even though half the bins were empty), followed by sitting in the last row of the plane by the bathrooms (which is the worst) while my family sat near the front, all while a 6-month old child screamed for 3 1/2 hours.

 

About the only good things that happened were a) my global entry card did at least get me through customs in five minutes and b) a Delta employee on our flight to Omaha noticed I was the only person in my group (yet again) shoved at the back of the plane and they moved me next to my wife since there were open seats.

Uggg, that does sound horrible.  

[teachercd]

Heading to a destination wedding in the DR and of course you needed 10 dollars (cash) to enter the country...well I get to the airport ATM at 4am and the f#&%ing thing eats my card...no one around to help.  After 30 minutes of pushing buttons...it spits my card out but I still need the cash...so I try again...IT WORKS!  

 

On the way back I was leaving with 4 other people I knew...they all had the 1pm flight mine was 4pm...But I went with them the airport anyway.  My sister asked one of the workers if I could switch mine from 4pm to 1pm...the guy replied "4pm?  We don't have a 4pm flight" she said "Ummm, what should he do?" and the guy said "Maybe just get in line for the 1pm and see if they take his ticket"

 

They did.

[Enhance]

2 hours ago, krc1995 said:

2013. My Dallas based flight crew put my family and maybe 50 other people on a flight from Lafayette La to Dallas knowing full well that there was significant weather pending and that all of our connecting flights would be canceled. But left we did

 

The weather moved in much faster than anticipated and the 50 minute flight turned into about six hours of hell. While in the air, tornados touched down at the Dallas airport and of course we couldn’t  land, so we fly in a square for some time and we land somewhere, like Abilene and sit for hours. Take off, get up for awhile, and then the announcement comes from the c$%kpit that we are going back to Abilene because we’re effin almost out of gas. Get back up in the air and fly through a bunch of black clouds and it is the most turbulent thing I’ve ever been through.  My son was 7 and I was nauseous for him. He handled well, but looked at me when the plane was rocking like a shrimp boat in the gulf and slammed the window shut. Talk about helpless

 

landed. An hour to disbark. Connecting flight to Omaha missed and we can’t reschedule until Sunday(it’s thursday) no rental cars available and the only hotel room was a 20-30 cab ride, but of course they refuse to get our luggage. We stayed in the hotel and were able to get a rental car to drive our humble selves home picking up our luggage at the Lafayette airport

 

the worst part- that trip was to see my daughter graduate from UNO and we couldn’t make it 

That's terrible. I know of something sort of a similar that happened to a good friend of mine (in terms of missing something really important).

 

One of my good friends missed their dad's last hours because of flight trouble once (got stuck circling near Dallas for about 90 minutes and missed the connecting flight to Omaha). He finally got onto a plane about seven hours later and his dad passed about 30 min. before he touched down in Omaha.

 

As a side note, my wife and I also got stuck circling outside Dallas after our honeymoon this last July because of weather trouble. That area is bad juju.

[StPaulHusker]

Minneapolis to Chicago to Nashville and back the same way.  All in one day.  It was stupid of me to attempt this but I had limited time to attend this meeting-which was a 2 hour drive from Nashville into Kentucky

 

Minneapolis to Chicago-All is good.  Arrived on time

Chicago to Nashville-2 hour delay.  Which means I was 2 hours late getting to Kentucky.  Which meant I was going to be very close to not making my flight from Nashville to Chicago

 

Finished my meeting and drove stupidly fast back to Nashville because at this time, I was going to miss my flight

 

Got to Nashville, made it through security with about 5 minutes to spare-Only to find out that my flight was delayed because the plane I was taking to Chicago was delayed in D.C. due to weather

 

Now, I'm not sure if I will make it to Chicago in time to make my flight to Minneapolis.

 

Got to O'Hare.  They dropped me in one concourse and I had to sprint to a different one to make my flight.

 

I missed it by minutes.  Pulled away from the gate.  They told me I could take a shuttle to a hotel or take my chances on stand by for the last flight of the night.  I rolled the dice

 

The last flight of the night was delayed a couple of hours so it was about 230AM when it arrived.  I was 8th in the standby list.  They took 7.  By now It was after 3AM and the first flight out was 6AM so I ended up sleeping in the airport for a few hours.

 

2 lessons learned-Pay extra for non-stop if it's relatively reasonable and don't plan meetings this far from home and expect to get home in the same day.

 

 

[Redux]

Flying home from Orlando my wife and I were on Southwest non assigned seating.  So we got split up and I ended up smack dab in the middle of about 8 or so 19yr old girls all part of like a soccer team or something.  I had forgotten how much females that age can say all while saying nothing at all.  I've visited hen houses with better ambiance.  We land in Chicago.....lightning.  Now, we are stuck on the plane for lat least another hour.  And the chatter reaches unprecedented levels.  I start wondering how one could con his way into using the evacuation slide.  Finally we get off and I bolt it for my wife and some normalcy, it was maddening.

[huKSer]

I was at the Atlanta airport when it went on lock down because of this:

 

 

[GSG]

We've had some delays of about an hour or so but nothing too crazy. The worst one was when we took the shuttle to the airport. When you sign up, it clearly states that the shuttle will not wait for you if you're late. Well our driver decided not to follow those rules and we left 20 minutes late because he waited for 1 person. Then when we got to the airport he won't let anyone off because he's giving some big speech about his birthday or some bulls#!t. We ended up missing our flight, but luckily Southwest put us on the next flight out for no additional cost.