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!

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.

This was 30+ years ago, but I misread my tickets and missed my original flight out of Tampa headed to Chicago with a stop in Atlanta. I rebooked another about 3 hours later, but when I got to Atlanta, I found out my original connecting flight to Chicago crashed in Indiana due to ice on the wings. That could have been me. RIP to those who made that flight.

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.

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.

I’ll NEVER EVER trust that feature again.

I’m a dual national and my name is different in each passport. Bought the plane ticket with the name written in one of the passports but then I forgot it at home 🤦‍♂️

I had the other one on me but since the name in it was different they didn’t let me on the plane…

Ever since then I keep both passports very close to each other with a rubber band!

Missed train, but eh, whatever.

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 once denied a boarding pass. I was going to another country for a week, and I had 3 or 4 months left before my passport’s expiry date. The country I was going to requires a minimum of 6 months passport validity, I had no idea that was even a rule, I didn’t even think to check.

I felt very foolish.

A bit different one:

The year was 2010, and I was living abroad at the time. I was visiting the old country for a few days to renew my passport, and the day before I was supposed to fly back to where I lived, two things happened:

• Ran into this FWB i knew before moving abroad.
• Eyjafjallajökull had a volcanic eruption, shutting down air traffic in all of northern Europe.

Long story short, my FWB and I reconnected in the extra time I was given, and things developed further than they ever had before. Today we have a house and four kids together. I think it’s getting serious.

“sir, that flight was yesterday”

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!

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.

Fell asleep in Dubai waiting at the gate for my transfer eight hours early. Woke up too late to realise the gate had changed while I was sleeping and I couldn’t board in the five minutes left. I thought I’d wake up once more people were there but thanks to the gate change, it never filled up.

Was flying from Austin TX to Lax Vegas with a stop in Salt Lake City Utah via a standby ticket. So the pros of the standby ticket was I was flying for almost nothing. The con is you can only get on the flight if there’s an available seat.

So I get to SLC no problem. But then the trip to LV had a canceled flight. So needless to say there was no standby flights available for several hours as they kept using those spaces for the canceled flight. Hours later I’m at the desk waiting for the update on the last flight of the night alongside a small family that was from SLC but had also been waiting several hours. We get the update. Not flying out till the following morning. Being that they’re from SLC and Vegas is about 6 hours away they’re all like screw it. Cancel the flights and just drive. At this point I’m like “great. Sleeping in an airport”.

So they start to leave then look to me and just ask if I want to take the ride with them. Hell yea. I’m in. Grab my bag and follow these people I’ve never even spoken to out. They tell me they’re just going to stop by home and switch cars. Cool no problem. We get to their place (it’s like midnight at this point and reality sets in for them) and they’re like hey it’s late. We’re sorry but are you ok with leaving in the morning?

So not only did I jump in total strangers car for a 6 hour ride across Utah into Nevada (whole lot of nothing between those points), but I also stopped by their house and slept on the couch.

Charles de Gaulle Airport. Nothing more to be said