chrislondon2

Obsessive checking doesn't always work if you're checking the wrong screen! I was in the middle of a tier point run, relaxing in some godforsaken lounge somewhere in Europe just playing round on the internet killing off the remaining time on a multi-hour connection before my next flight (to London). I was using a PC in the lounge, watching the clock on the PC and thinking how much time I still had to waste before slowly sauntering down to the gate. For want of anything better to do I checked the flight screen in the lounge only to find no sign whatsoever of my flight in the next hour or more. It probably took a good 20 seconds for me to realise that the PC's clock was an hour slow and that my flight's departure time had, in fact, itself departed 10 minutes earlier. My flight was on the flight screen in the lounge but right at the top, because the flight had been delayed - nothing to do with me, I eventually learned from the staff at the gate. Just like the OP it caused me massive panic and induced a mad dash from lounge to gate, where boarding had been completed 30 minutes earlier but the plane inexplicably still hadn't taken off and the gate was still open. I must have looked a complete idiot, breathlessly staggering to my seat when all those around me had been in their places for half an hour already, just waiting for take-off. The cabin door closed right behind me and the plane taxied out almost immediately - I could see at least a couple of passengers looking at me thinking that their delay had been caused by the pilot having to wait for this madman to make a delayed connection from another flight. I neither had enough breath, nor enough courage, to explain that the delay was nothing to do with me being an important passenger for whom the plane had to be delayed so that I'd make the connection, but that my dramatic, much delayed and very breathless arrival on the plane was totally caused by my own utter stupidity.

Moral of the story ... check, check and check again, especially when transiting, that you're sure how long it is before your flight leaves, and don't rely on strange PCs in an unfamiliar lounge.