I haven't missed a flight...yet! Well, OK, just one, but not entirely my fault.

I was doing a SC run on QF in New Zealand, shuttling between AKL and WLG all day (started in WLG and onto AKL, then AKL-WLG-AKL, then again, and again.) Got to AKL in the morning fine, but when there was an announcement that one QF plane had been stranded in ZQN I should have smelt all the trouble right away. FYI for those that don't often travel in NZ, weather does awful things to the domestic schedule (especially QF whose 733s aren't equipped as well as their rival NZ A320s or 737s), and schedule delays can be unpredictable. Well, that was my undoing. I unwisely did nothing and went AKL-WLG-AKL, with my first AKL-WLG delayed. When I arrived back to AKL, even though I was in row 1 and I sprinted up the aerobridge into the terminal, my next AKL-WLG had already pushed back and taxiing for take-off.

I didn't get much love - I had to forgo one AKL-WLG-AKL that day and my missed AKL-WLG was rebooked without charge. When I talked about my AKL-WLG-AKL that I had to forgo, I was told that I'd have to pay fare difference but they'd waive the change fee. I ended up cancelling it (and losing a decent sum in the process). But lesson learnt.

Near misses? I've had a few....

I had one during OzFest #5 in HBA. I was supposed to be going in a group taxi with 3 other people on the first HBA-MEL service of the morning, which leaves 0605h; HBA city to airport is about 20 minutes. So we all agree to meet at 0440h to catch the taxi (I was in a separate hotel to the others). Woke up at 0230h first and dozed off. But when I woke up, it was...you guessed it...0440h! I called the taxi company and this is the first time I realised that there aren't many taxis in HBA at this time of the morning. They first said that it was either I go now or never, but I ran around my room throwing all my things into my bag, then I called back at 0452h and they said they have a taxi available - thank goodness! Got to the airport, made the bag drop cutoff and sheepishly met my other taxi buddies.

Another one more recently was that I was driving to the airport with my dad; normally it would take about 22 minutes to drive from where we were to the airport. But it was afternoon rush and p*****g down rain. It was 1620h and I needed to be at the check-in desk by 1705h. Long story short, we found a lucky detour and I got to the check-in desk right on 1705h to drop my bag before being told that the "technical" cut-off for bag drop is 30 minutes before departure, not 45. To add to the irony, my flight ended up being delayed for 1 hour.