Overheard at the CX ticketing counter at HKIA on Friday night:

Young man: "Hello. Where should I fly?"
Booking agent: "I beg your pardon?"
Man: "I want to fly somewhere and I don't know where I should go. Where do you think I should go?"
Agent: "I cannot decide that for you. It is very busy and there are a lot of people in the queue. Now where do you want to go?"
Man: "I don't know. How about Bangkok?"
Agent: "It is Chinese New Year this week and the flights to Bangkok are all heavily booked."
Man: "I could go somewhere else. I have already been to Bangkok."
Agent: "*pause* Do you have a phone?"
Man: "Yes."
Agent: "The wifi in this airport is free. Go and sit down over there and look up the Cathay Pacific website. When you have decided where you want to go, then you can get back in the queue and I will try to find you a flight. Next please."

I just tried not to laugh as the agent had obviously had a long shift and was not taking any of this guy's nonsense. She did well not to tell him to go to hell. I'm all for spontaneous travel, but come on, if you really cannot choose your own destination, roll a dice or something.

Obviously neither of them has seen Up In The Air:

"I'd just show up at the airport, look up at one of those big destination boards, pick a place and go"

I was on the verge of doing that Friday night.

Quite a novel way to spend a weekend! I can see why a CX check in agent drew a blank though.

This is hilarious. Did it seem like the guy was pulling a prank, or was just eccentric?

Agent: Sir, how about visiting London? Let me check. We have one first class ticket available in 2.5 hr, for $35,000 USD. Would you like to visit London?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...-roulette.html is a recent example of this (blind random trip)

My problem with this is asking the ticketing agent may not always be random since they will want to sell you the most expensive ticket, no?

I would go for eccentric. It didn't seem to be a prank - he was friendly but quite earnest. I just took him for a free spirit sort of person.

The way he just launched into it so confidently made me think that maybe he does this all the time. Maybe he figured that the agent at the ticketing desk could easily pull up a list of all available seats leaving from Hong Kong that night and give him a list of possible destinations.

Frankly in this day and age I would think you'd need to be careful about that sort of request. Anyone who just wants to get on a flight without caring where it goes could easily be seen as suspect by security officials.

I feel much less travelbugged today after using the weekend productively and scoring a couple of Christmas redemption this morning on the 330 day window.

I did this once when I had a week before flying home from SE Asia. Travelled to KUL LCCT, went up to the Air Asia booking desks and looked at the departure screen as I got further up the queue. Decided to play it safe and head back to Thailand, as I was flying out of BKK.

Jumped on a flight to Chiang Mai and that night I met the dutch woman that would become my wife.