Fishing Sea

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

I’ve traveled extensively for business and pleasure for over 25 years and have my share of good, bad and ugly travel stories.  Here are a few of my more memorable ones.

Planes

After a week in D.C. on business in the mid-80s, I was returning home at about five in the afternoon on the Friday before Memorial Day.  National Airport (that what it was called then) was as packed as you’d expect for a holiday weekend.  I had to sit across the aisle from my flight’s departure gate and between the din and poor speaker quality  the flight announcements were hard to understand.  My flight’s departure time passed without a boarding announcement.

About a half-hour after the scheduled time, there was an announcement I couldn’t make out but everyone in that boarding area got into line and so I did too.  I showed my boarding ticket to the agent and was waved through.  I located my seat for the flight to Atlanta and hoped I wouldn’t miss the connection to Florida.

Then, another passenger asked if I was in the correct seat and I flashed my boarding card.  He remarked there was a screw-up because he had the same seat but would find another one.  As the flight attendants began their routine before shutting the door, I overheard a passenger in the seat in front of me remarking about what time the flight would arrive…in Dallas!

I was on the wrong flight! That explained the seat assignment “error.”   I quickly exited the plane and my flight boarded at the same gate after the Dallas flight left. This experience began bad, ended up good but could have been very ugly.

More Planes

Enroute to Manila in 1995 for a three week trip to Asia for our honeymoon, Susie and I had an overnight layover in Seoul.  The next morning, I noticed the Korean Airlines agent was closely scrutinizing my passport and the temporary Korean Airlines frequent flyer program membership card I had picked up in Atlanta to get credit for the thousands of miles we were flying.  Finally, she gave us our boarding documents with a simple “enjoy your flight.”

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