Comedy of errors left me at the airport; how to rectify?
 

Had a bad experience last night with Ethiopian Airlines, and I'd like some advice about whether or not I should try to get compensated. Here's the story:

I'm mobilized in Djibouti, Africa for the year. It isn't a particularly pleasant place, but we do get to take two 96-hour liberty periods off. They've tightened the rules, so it is really only 96 hours (before last month, you could fly somewhere and not get the flight days counted against the four days).

Anyway, my girlfriend and I decided that we would meet in Istanbul, Turkey, because it only takes me 10 hours to get there, and it takes her about 14 (total with layovers) from Boston.

My flight last night was scheduled for 7pm out of Djibouti, to Ethiopia. I printed my boarding pass on my computer, went to the airport, went through customs, and then waited for the plane. When it was time to board, the gate agent wouldn't accept my self-printed boarding pass. He let everyone else go first, then he said, "come with me." We walked back down to the check-in (it's a tiny airport), and he asked them to get me a new boarding pass.

About two minutes later, I hear a plane start its engines, and I think, "I hope that's not my plane." It was my plane. It took off without me, and no one stopped it.

After a lot of yelling by all the people at the airport, they finally scheduled me for another flight today, which will get me in about 12 hours later than originally planned. So much for my 96-hour vacation -- now it's 84 hours.

So of course my girlfriend has to navigate through Istanbul by herself and isn't thrilled (and esp. after the woman from NYC was found dead). Luckily I was able to text her before she got on her cross-Atlantic flight, so she knew I wouldn't be there to meet her.

Question: should I email the airlines to tell them I'm upset? If so, should I request some sort of compensation? Is it even worth it to bother? I'm still going to enjoy the shorter trip, but I'm peeved that it was cut short because of airline/airport staff mistakes.

This is a no-brainer IMHO: you did everything you had to do, even making it easier/cheaper for the airline by printing off the boarding pass. You were at the gate in time, the plane shouldn't have left without you. Write an e-mail and a letter with as much detail about who/where/when and let them known you're disappointed that they've let you down.

Most of the requests for compensation that I see on FT are ridiculous but what happened to you is ridiculous in the opposiste direction. That GA should be reprimanded and you should be compensated in some way.

Did you obey their rules:
1) Two copies of boarding pass.
2) First and middle name appended together (if applicable)
3) No bags (it would appear so if you went directly to the gate)
4) Were you on time.

Unless this is known I don't see how anyone can answer from a position of certainty.

I did not have two copies of the boarding pass, but that didn't seem to be the issue (the issue was that the airport doesn't accept self-printed boarding passes).

Otherwise, I followed the rules (I was 3 hours early...).

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Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I made it to my destination, so I'm not too upset about it now. I'll follow up with the airline when I return. Cheers!

I can't count the number of times I've been given or seen other people been given crap in Africa or Asia for not having an airline-printed boarding pass. Hell, even when I was flying CGK-SIN-HKG-EWR, with the first leg on Singapore Air, I got crap from United in Singapore for having a boarding pass that wasn't printed on United card stock (it was on Singapore Air card stock). They were able to quickly print out a boarding pass for me at the gate, so no issues thankfully.

In some third would countries, however, you can get screwed over like you did. In one case, this caused me extreme pain in Mumbai when connecting to a flight and I had to go through an exercise and a half when connecting. Basically I had to wait in a chair with no access to food/drinkable water for 3.5 hours before the airline check-in counter opened because they wouldn't let me connect with a printed BP that would be completely legal for me to board a flight with in USA.

Also, last week I flew back MPM-JNB-JFK and South African Air was holding people at the BP scanner in JNB who only had a printed BP.

There is a very different approach to compensation on non-US carriers - I dont have experience with Ethiopian but I suggest you decide how much of your life is worth pursuing this before you get 'sucked in' to people telling you how many 100,000 of miles airlines owe you.

This is posted without judgement of the treatment you received. Im glad you are going to enjoy libery time with your GF first...:D