Hellobee Boards

When I was 18 I went on a school trip to Paris. We flew Air Pakistan (seriously) and had a bomb threat called in mid-flight. I asked the flight attendant when we were getting our meals and she told me "when we return to JFK." We were so confused and thought we'd heard her wrong.

They turned the flight around and took us back to the airport where we had to wait for hours in the terminal. Then we had to take crowded trams out to the tarmac and identify our luggage. On route they announced the bomb threat. Hours later we finally got on the plane and waited another hour or so and finally took off. We got to Paris 9 hours late.

Mine was when I was flying back to China. I got my departure time wrong, the time I had to be there was the time I thought I had to leave my house. I got to the airport 30 minutes before my flight was leaving and pissed off a lot of people jumping to the front in both the line to get my ticket and security.
My layover from Boston was in Chicago then a 13 hour flight to Shanghai. I tried to stay awake for the first part to sleep on the second and long flight but I fell asleep and didn't sleep for all the 13 hours. Plus my period start so I was throwing up for most of the 13 hours to Shanghai.
Then I had to take a 4 hour bus ride to my city from there and my cell phone (and translator) was dead. I still had to buy my bus ticket so between sign language and limited Chinese I got on the right bus. But my roommate (who had the only set of keys) didn't know what time I was getting in. I had to wait at my apartment for an hour before she got home.

In Krakow airport. The conveyor belt thingys for the bags were broken, which resulted in huge queues. By the time we had checked our bags, it was almost time to take off - but the queues to get through security were just as bad. Everyone was in a panic because everyone was going to miss their flight - so the queues turned into a riot, basically! There was pandemonium, people were pushing, shoving, ripping each other out of the metal detectors to force themselves in first. I had gotten near to the metal detector when i heard them calling my name - last call for my flight! I panicked and, with my bag and my clear plastic bag containing a can of deodorant still in my hand I leapt through the metal detector, which beeped of course, and waved my can of deodorant menacingly at the nearest person - staff perhaps - screaming "get back, you!" and then ran for it! Nobody even tried to stop me!

I made the flight but how I wasn't arrested is beyond me.

DH travels every week for work and while he doesn't have anything too awful, some of his co-workers do.

The worst I've heard from his coworkers is a flight where they were preparing to land and the flaps on the wings wouldn't come down. They spent a long time circling the airport trying and nothing was working. Eventually air traffic control cleared the runway in preparation for them to crash land. They said you could look out the window and see the lights of all the ambulances and fire trucks below as well as the fire- retardant foam on the runway. They circled a while longer to burn as much fuel as possible to minimize the risk of explosion/fire on impact. The pilot came over the PA and reviewed the brace position and they started descending again for the crash landing with no flaps. By some miracle, just before touchdown the flaps released and they landed safely but it was such a surreal experience!

@Cherrybee: Hahaha. That sounds totally stressful, but also amazing and bad ass.

I have two.

The first was when I flew with a bad cold. My sinus was inflamed and put pressure on my tooth. The pain in landing was excruciating. I'd consider it the worst I've experienced, including labour.

The second is when I happened to develop a mild fever en route to Shanghai at the height of the swine flu scare. I was marked as a possible case of swine flu on arrival, separated, led through a back route out of shanghai pudong airport where there was an ambulance then taken to a hospital 45 minutes outside of shanghai where I was locked up for ten hours while they ran tests to make sure I was clear...

I was starting my solo backpacking trip to Europe. I was flying out of Harrisburg, PA to Washington Dulles. My flight out of Hbg was delayed because a bird hit the windshield on landing, and they had to get the cleaned up. I landed with about 15 minutes to run to my next flight at Dulles, only to find out they took off early (when does that EVER happen?!). There were no more flights out that night, so the airline comped me a hotel room. I called the phone number on the voucher thing they gave me and they set me up with a hotel, which was difficult because there was some big political convention happening in DC, so a lot of the hotels were totally booked. Anyway, I got a cab and gave him the address. We were driving for like 35 minutes, which seemed really long, and I asked the driver where he was going, because the guy on the hotel reservations line had told me the hotel was only about 15 miles from the airport. Turns out, the hotel was 15 miles from BWI, not Dulles. My flight out the next morning at 6am was out of Dulles! I got to the hotel they booked for me and called the airline to try to change my flight to BWI. I was on the phone for almost 2 hours until they finally changed my flight (and didn't charge me change fees - I had to speak to an on-call supervisor, because it was nearly 1am at this point). So my travel now went BWI to Detroit to London. I lost almost 2 full days of my trip, which was supposed to have been spent in Ireland.

On that same trip, I got pick-pocketed in Barcelona and had to cut a week off the end of my trip to fly home early because I had no money and no credit cards.

I have flown stand-by my entire life, so I've gotten used to sleeping in airports and missing flights. The craziest story though goes to my sister and BIL - they came to Vietnam to visit us for a week during her school break. As I was taking them to the airport, the typhoon in Japan hit, and ALL flights to Japan were canceled, which was all her main and back up plans. After a long night of Googling, we got them on a flight with multiple stops in China that would eventually get them to Seattle.

They entered China, were then detained and told since they didn't have a visa they would be in a lot of trouble if they didn't leave in 24 hours (their next flight to another destination in China left in 23 hours!), managed to find a guardian angel that spoke English that got them on the plane. The next stop in China they slept on a bench where people kept taking pictures with them, and then eventually wound up in Seattle, then to New York and then finally home to Atlanta. She said she was scarred from traveling for awhile.

My luggage got lost going from Boston to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. After two days the airline called to say they found it, but it wasn't in the condition we left it in. We get to the airport and they hand us two cardboard boxes. Our luggage got stuck on the conveyor belt and caught on fire!

Coming back from Haiti (couple of months after earthquake), our team had a two hour layover in Miami en route to Atlanta. We had a twenty member team and we kept losing ppl along the way in Miami's airport. Customs took forever...In customs, two ppl were detained (for no reason) and then we lost like 5 who got lost trying to get to the connecting flight. Miami's airport was under construction and to get to the connecting flight we had to walk at least 2 miles and part of which took us through the parking lot outside. Then 3 ppl got to the gate as it was closing and they wouldn't let them in. So out of the 20 member team, like 11 made it on the second flight. (I barely made it on ). When we finally got to destination, none of our luggage made it. The 11 ppl who didn't make it, their family was eagerly waiting for them and they had to sleep at the Miami airport until the next morning. No one had their cell phones (bc we were just coming back from Haiti) and couldn't get in touch with them, etc etc.

We still joke that conditions of Haiti was nothing compared to Miami airport.

@brady80: OMG!

@misolee: when we were in Haiti, one of my friends got super sick. She was walking through the entrance to PAP airport (where they check passports) and barfing into a garbage bag. The guard just waved her through.

I've had a few bad trips. Once they rebooked us to a flight and then bumped us from it...there was four people trying to "help" and they all kept swearing they would get us back on. We were like, "um, you just shut the doors to the flight. Can you just rebook us at this point?"

But the funniest (although really minor) was once I had a flight delayed and I was going to miss all my subsequent connections. So I asked them to rebook me. I was trying to get to Missoula, MT. The lady kept asking me where Missoula was. I told her it was in Montana. She asked me, "okay, where's Montana?" I didn't know what to say. "Um, next to Idaho?" And then she told me she couldn't find an airport code for Montana. She eventually did get me on a flight the next day though!

I've had a couple but just this last week we were returning from a funeral and I had a big meeting at work the next morning and we literally sprinted through the airport with a kid strapped to both our chests and my husband carrying a car seat on his head. Our first flight was delayed and we were going to just make it except they had shut the doors early. Of course it was the last flight out and I ended up having our many pick us up in the morning (at a different airport then where our luggage and car was), buy me some clothes at Walmart, and drop me off at my meeting. The airline got us a hotel and some meal vouchers but we only got to sleep 3 hours and my husband had to take a $50 cab ride to get diapers after midnight because I only had enough to get us home that day.

I refuse to fly United- no family boarding, our baby had a blowout mid-flight, but they wouldn't let us up to go change him due to nonexistent turbulance, the lady next to us started yelling about the smell, so we tried to change him in the seat and got yelled at for that by the flight attendant. Never. Again. I would rather walk.

Another time was much more fun and just a series of misadventures-
Our honeymoon, the flight to Fiji got interrupted by Cyclone Tomas and our flight was delayed for a day. We got stranded in LA, and had a blast goofing off in Venice Beach and Santa Monica Pier.

We then got stranded in Nadi, Fiji for several days before we could fly into our resort on another island, Taveuni. Their control "tower" had been blown down. We made the most of it and found an ok hotel that actually turned out to be pretty great. No AC when we got in, finally got that working and there were cockroaches everywhere. Ultimately the pool and food were fantastic though and we got a last minute cruise around a few islands and had so much fun.

Our resort on Taveuni had severe damage and some of the roads were in really bad shape, but we got to see a lot of cool things that the foliage usually covers, like fruit bats. I think we had more fun with all of the changes to the plans than we would have if it all went as planned.

I remember once on the way to HKG from JFK, we were stuck in Chicago for like 9 hours or something.

We were in Texas when hurricane Irene hit NY so we were stuck in TX for an extra night and waited in the airport ALL day b/c all flights going back to NY were backed up. That was pretty awful!

I have had SOOOO many. I don't think you really want to know! But I'll keep it brief- I have been (unjustly) arrested in an airport and detained in another country's immigration, I have had a carrier lose my passport so I couldn't leave the country, I have had to sleep overnight in countless airports, I had to fly with a crazy puppy that bit me, I had a crazy airline worker come on the plane to try to confiscate my guitar and they were battled off by the stewardess and pilot. I've missed flights and spent 12 hours periods in airports as well as overnight, had inclement weather and seats sold out from under me. I used to fly ALL the time and now I NEVER DO!