A few years ago I was due to come back from Paris on Eurostar when, about an hour before I was due to leave, I had a text to tell me that the entire northern French railway network had died. So I phone around the airlines on a noisy street corner until I found, and booked, two seats on Buzz to Stansted (seemed to be the last two seats out of Paris!).

Turned up at CDG, checked in, to discover that the names they had down for the booking bore very little relation to either of the people in my party. I was the only person who was bothered, though - the check-in person just smiled, said "oh, it doesn't matter - nobody will check". Sure enough, nobody checked.

I guess things have changed...