Goofs of the year
 

Yesterday I took my last flight of 1998. I have done a bit 'statement analysis' and reckon on 84 transatlantic sectors and a total of 214 flights in the year. With 261 nights in hotels.

I tought for a bit of fun, I would share with you some of the goofs I have made during the years travels. Here goes:

1. Flying from London to Oslo Fornebu airport for a 2 hour meeting. Only to find out that the meeting was at Oslo Torp airport.

2. Driving for 4 hours to Gatwick for a flight for Chicago, only to find out that the flight left from Heathrow - which I had driven past an hour earlier.

3. Arriving for a BA flight to be told I had no reservation. After much shouting telling BA I would never fly with them again, only to realise that I had booked the flight for the 6th July instead of the 7th June (ie. muddeling the British 7/6/98 and American 6/6/98).

4. Checking in with British Midland and being very impressed with the full VIP treatment, only to discover that they thought I was a VIP (Nick Berry - a well known British actor) and not Nick Merry an unknown British HR Director.

5. But my personal favorite, arriving for a conference in Crete, having had much too much too drink. Going for a siesta and not knowing what happend until waking up on the stairs of the hotel completely naked (apparently having sleep walked). Not remembering what my room number was and having no key, having to go to reception still naked and ask for a key.

After the initial embarresment I decided that there was nobody at the hotel who knew me and deciding not to give a ****. Only to go to dinner and find my fathers elderly neighbours sitting at the table next to me.


I await 1999 with anticipation.
MF

PS: Sorry for going Omni, but it is that time of year!

Jan-98: Flying with my brother to the Superbowl at San Diegoe: beeing denied delivery of the long-before-paid-Superbowl-ticket, getting it only minutes before the game started, after a police-intervention (I did post the San Diegoe newspaper story in the early days of FlyerTalk here)

Jan-98: Driving the rent-a-car in a rush to the Murphy-stadium (Superbowl, San Diego), being lucky to find a youngster showing me a parking-spot at the boarder of the freeway for only $5 - and after the game paying a fine and costs of about $150, and searching for my car a 30-minutes drive away (it had been towed away ...).

May-98: Playing "car-shuttle-service" from Zurich airport to downtown for many guests, I park about 14 times at the tall parking house (12 levels) - and at the 11th time not remebering anymore where I parked the car this time - search-time at least 20 minutes (with guests - my MOTHER IN LAW - waiting).

Nov-98: US and Canada: My children made me a "magnetized" present to hold my tie - whenever I passed security at airports it did give alarm, so I did put it into my purse - and all my credit-cards were demagnetized!).

Dec-98: checking in (with Gisela) at Denver on a UA-first-class-award-2-person-ticket DEN-IAD-Brussels and then ongoing with Swissair (also award): finding out that I booked the Swissair-award-ticket for the wrong date (the Denver-departure-date, forgetting the red-eye-night inbetween).

my best was at the TPA airport, after a 3 day trip to Sao Paulo. Had spent the day up in New York wandering around so got to TPA after being up 40 hours or so. I could not remember where I parked. I wandered around the place for 1 1/2 hours--after calling for help and being told "We take a complete inventory every night--with your license plate number we could have you out in a jiffy" I rented a car at Hertz, where I ran into a guy I went to high school with 18 years ago (!), then found the license number the next day, went back to the airport, told them what the plate was and within 30 seconds was told section, level and space. Major oops!

I once parked at Denver airport on the East parking lot, then spent half an hour on the way back on the West parking lot. Finally I gave up and asked the personnel and they looked up my car plate number in their records and told me where I had parked.

I got a magnetic money clip this year. On numerous occasions this has demagnetized my hotel key.

Those were good, thanks for sharing.

My only memorable goof for 1998 wasnt even my fault. I arrived in ORD last May on a Sunday evening. The usual group of family members eagerly awaited loved ones when a woman jumped in front of me and hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. After pulling back, I asked if I knew her! She was waiting for a family member that she has not seen in a few years and I guess I looked like him except that he was somewhere farther behind me in the deplaning process!

On my second-last day on a cargo/IT project I was supposed to travel to Cologne with my replacement, Edem, and show him the ropes. BA doesn't have many flights to Cologne each day, so we had to catch a 7am commuter flight in order to have time to do the job & get back. Travelling so much, I had developed checking in at the last moment to a fine art - I knew exactly how long it took to get to the tube, & thence to Heathrow. However, this particular morning, traffic was unbelievably slow (an accident), & the usually fast Piccadilly line crawled along. I arrived with minutes to spare, ran to the ticket desk where I'd told Edem to meet me - and he wasn't there! It seemed that he hadn't checked in either... He'd gone to the *other* BA ticket desk, and by the time I found him it was too late to check in... So we had to fly to Dusseldorf instead, and the Cologne BA station manager had to drive an hour each way to collect us...

One of my colleagues went to Africa early in the project. He was supposed to fly from Gatwick to Harare, & thence to Nairobi. But his car broke down on the way to the airport, and he completely missed the Harare flight - so he flew to Nairobi via Dar es Salaam instead. These are late-night flights, so he couldn't phone anyone to let them know what had happened - nobody knew where he was for the next 24 hours. Dar can be hell-hole, for those of you who haven't been there - it's almost on the equator, & is incredibly hot & humid all year round. In addition, Swahili is the dominant language - very few people speak passable English (this was Andy's first time in Africa). When he got to Dar he didn't have the requisite yellow-fever vaccination documentation, so he had to bribe his way across the airport to get to his Nairobi flight...

A guy I work with's wife got stranded by Eastwind Airlines in Ft. Lauderdale when she intended to fly into Tampa--she was going Trenton-GSO-TPA. She's consultant and an experienced traveler, so if it happened to her, it could happen to anyone. Eastwind's two planes were intended to be TTN/GSO/TPA and BOS/GSO/FLL. Apparently, after she left TTN, the airline decided to switch the aircraft--the aircraft she was on was going to FLL, and the other to TPA. They did not make an announcement to that effect, so Audrey stayed on the plane during the layover. Needless to say, she was steamed when she got to FLL. One of the Eastwind pilots took pity on her and whispered "they'll refund your Southwest ticket back to TPA if you ask." She did, they did, but, alas, they no longer fly into TPA.

I don't remember any goofs for this year, but the classic (which almost gave a coronary a few years ago) was this car service taking me from Jerzee to LAG airport. It was her first day, she was nervous, got lost then on the G-W bridge was rammed from behind. So we spent an hour on the bridge. Then I got all upset and she rushed to the airport-- only dropping me off at JFK airport. She was crying and I simply ran out of the car.

Luckily Delta said they would honor my ticket (It was NYC to D-C... forget what airport!)

Then on the way back the guy for the same car service spent most of the time telling me
about how he broke up with his girlfriend. He was a bit drunk too (making me nautious and nervous) and on the Williamburg bridge back to Manhattan our car was hit with rocks
from these kids. He simply pulled over, waited for a cop then passed out. The very
pretty female lieutenant came over, arrested
him for drunk driving and she arranged for the Port authority to drive me home.

Needless to say I never used that car service
again! CATMAN