ladiflier

Two recent ones caused by my SO.

Last year headed out on a cruise from FLL for a family reunion. Flew down the day before and all is wonderful as we are checking in for flights and he is using his license. I was just using the passports for my kids and I so I asked him where his passport it. Gives me this look as if I'm the biggest dummy ever and says "its only FLL, not some foreign country". I proceed to remind him that it is a Caribbean cruise and you can't sail without. Well, at this point, we will miss our flight so some frantic calls to a friend and the passport is in the hands of my sister who was fortunately on a later flight.

Second one just happened this Saturday on our way home from CUN. (Silly me) but I left my SO in charge of the flight arrangements. He booked B6 and since it's international he couldn't do online check in. We get to JFK to depart and I ask if he has the itinerary at least. Say's nah, don't need. Ok, all fine - check in - get on flight - have a great vacation. For the return, need to book our transfers to the airport. SO said the flight was something like 4PM so he goes on line to get the info for the transfer folks and they say they will pick us up at 1:00 PM on Sat. Sure enough 1PM, get picked up and with luck don't have to make any other stops along the way. Get to airport at 1:30 and at 1:45 they ask for us by name of the line. I'm thinking how odd but they escort us up and just start clacking away and hand us boarding passes for a 2:30 flight. My first thought is wow, how nice, putting us on the earlier flight for nothing. Then I realize we have the exact same seats that my SO had booked originally. I thought that was very odd then realized - we were BOOKED on the 2:30 flight NOT the 4:30 flight. DUHHHH. We run to the gate and they are already boarding but we made it fine. Instead of checking our actual itinerary on line, he just looked to see what flights were leaving around the time he thought!

SO is definitely not in charge of travel arrangements in the future.

lskohn

I'm afraid if I list my errors I'll jinx myself, but here goes:

1. Lost my special-category passport while travellying in Israel many years ago. Father not happy, but problem was escalated and solved.

2. Years later (but still many years ago), I was out in PHX on business. It's Friday and my AA flight back to Chicago has been cancelled -- the next AA flight was Saturday a.m., but my kids were small, I wanted to get home by midnight so I'd have all of Saturday with them. Hooray! there was one more flight that day that would work, on America West, which our corporate travel agent switched me to. Only when I'm up at 36K feet do I remember that while I'm heading to MDW, my car is parked at ORD, so how did I spend Saturday morning with the kids? Riding the subway up to ORD to get the car. Of course, they thought this was great fun.

3. Innumerable times, I forgot to leave the rental car keys in the car when dropping off after hours, remembering them sometime before landing at ORD...Hertz and Avis at ORD would send them back where they belonged. Haven't done that in a long time!

4. The final and worst one - locking my rental car keys in the car in a tiny town 2 hours from the renting agency (the closest)...you only do that once.

flashware

I've had dreams where this has happened! Luckily it hasn't manifested itself yet

miamiScorpio

Left passport at BKK at the shuttle transportation service desk. Did not realize it was missing until I was checking in at the hotel. This was around 11pm at night, had to take a taxi back to the airport. Luckily the previous agent left the passport and a note with her replacements.

planemechanic

My wife and I were in Hawaii with a red convertible rental car. Parked in a small parking lot, shopped, came back and could not figure out why the key would not start the car. Looked around and realized there were two other red convertibles from the same rental agency in the lot and we were in the wrong one.

Eujeanie

My worst cost us a ton of money and inconvenience. We were flying r/t Boston, renting a car and visiting friends all over, including NY and NJ. Get to the car rental and I have NO LICENSE (I had been to the beach a couple of days before, and left it in my beach bag). No license, no car. (I can't remember how I got on the plane - it was a long time ago when security was "different" so I think they just took pity on me, I had all sorts of credit cards, etc. in my name). Had to have sis come to the airport to get us, had to pay for train tickets from BOS to CT and have friend in NY pick us up, had to have friend in NJ pick us up at friend's in NY, then THAT friend had to drive us to an airport where we had to pay for 2 plane tickets to fly back to BOS to catch our return flight.

Good thing our friends love us

erehwon

The one that sticks with me as the dumbest travel mistake I've made was in 2001, I was moderating and teaching in basically a bunker, we were entering the place early in the day and leaving in the evening. It was very disorienting and on top of things I was only really speaking to about the same 10 people for that week. What was really interesting at the beginning of the week grew very old by the end of the week, and I was really really tired.

The flight home was from Dallas to Houston and then to Chicago, when I got to Houston I made my way to the gate change to a gate ramp that had a fork in it, both flights were boarding at the same time, well instead of boarding the 32A gate to Chicago, I boarded 32B gate and flew back to Dallas.

I fully admit I was at fault for wandering onto another plane nearly braindead, the airline saw otherwise and they put me up for a night at a local Days Inn, given a food voucher and I flew out on the first flight of the day on another airline.

Bralo20

I arrived a couple of times a day early on the airport but besides that nothing to special...

However... A friend asked if it was possible to pick him up at the Manchester airport on Saturday. Always looking for a nice roadtrip I said, sure, no problem I'll come and pick you up. Now, I'm living near Brussels in Belgium but I'm a regular visitor to the UK. I've figured it out I would better use the Eurotunnel instead of the Oostende-Ramsgate ferry which I normally take since I love to take a ferry. I booked the Eurotunnel in Calais for friday at 7h00 in the morning to get to Manchester arround 11h so I could do some siteseeing before checking into my hotel.

Arround 4h my alarm went off and I took a shower, grabbed my bag an drove off... After about some relaxed cruising I stopped at the ferry terminal in Oostende and though, that's strange, there are no cars yet (the ferry leaves at 8h). I took my print and realised that I had booked the Eurotunnel in Calais instead of the ferry in Oostende...

Fortunately Eurotunnel has a 2 hour window from the train you have booked which you can chose which train you take. I made it in time to Calais and did not have to pay extra for taking a later train...

Only a small mistake but I felt really stupid, I just drove out of habit to Oostende instead of Calais.

stevechin

July 2004. My grandfather, who lives in Anchorage, passed away. I had previously booked a flight on AS for the entire weekend for the funeral service and other family activities. Unfortunately I got slammed with work that week, so had to telephone customer service to schedule a Saturday flight for the funeral, and same day return. I booked Saturday LAX-ANC, 5+ hours on the ground in ANC for the funeral and celebration of life, then back the same evening, arriving at LAX late night.

After the funeral activities, I went to ANC and was told by the AS agent that my flight wasn't until tomorrow, Sunday. We figured that the customer service agent thought I was staying for a day and nobody would actually schedule a flight from LAX-ANC and back in the same day. I probably heard the customer service agent say Sunday return, but it didn't register. No biggie as the AS check-in desk stuck me on the next flight from ANC-LAX.



August 2006. An old college buddy and I were going to fly to SEA for the weekend to hang out. I was flying from SNA, he was flying from where he currently lives in DEN. I bought my tickets. The day of the flight, I completely forgot and went about my normal routine. I didn't even remember to pack the night before. The next day, he called me to ask where I was.

durkinjt

You only had $20, and the the itinerary just started? How did you get thru the rest of the trip?

Pointeater

I had drove from Khao Lak to Holiday Inn Phuket in a rented car and arrived without any problems utilizing directions.

However, when I had to drive back to the airport for our flight to SIN, I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. By the time I realized what happened, I was telling my wife, it will probably just connect to the main road and she was telling me to turn around. I mean how many roads can this island have? I ended up driving this very long route to the airport that was sort of desolate for awhile.

All I knew was that I was not on the road I came into Phuket on. I really was just hoping the road would tie back into the main highway or see some sign.

It happened to be a relatively early morning and this particular road had few cars and I was passing them on this 2 lane road. I was speeding like crazy trying to make this flight because the next direct flight wasn't until tomorrow and of course we already had tix. I also had no idea where I was going other than general sense of direction. Hoping I would run into the main highway that goes to the airport or bump into some sign. Its hot as can be, and my wife is holding our infant son, because the car seat that came with the car was literally a POS without straps. So the more driving I do, the more anxious she is getting.

We finally make it to the airport and its cutting it really close now. By the time I got the car dropped off at the rental place (which was another ball of wax) I asked the girl if she can drop us off at the airport. As the Hertz place was a little off site. She locks the store up, and I drive her, my wife, our son, and another couple who are running late as well in our car back to the airport. She takes the car, we go through check in, security, customs, and barely make the flight.

The icing on the cake is after all that, we had the pleasure of squeezing into Tiger Air's seats - "now with LESS legroom" for 1 hour.

anat0l

Perhaps I can recommend you two a book:

Why Men Don't Listen And Why Women Can't Read Maps

elusive1

While in Panama, I got back to hotel at 3:30 AM, went to sleep knowing I had enough time as my flight was at 2:40 PM. I awoke in a panic at 1:00 PM, rushing out without even showering to grab a cab to the airport. While getting in the cab I realized that my watch was upside down.

I had a slow breakfast, and managed to get the front desk to give me my room back. I do remember thinking how tired I was and needed to quit drinking late.

skylady

Forgetting an extra shirt and candy bar when on a turnaround!

doctall41

I reserved a car in Dallas (my city of origin) when I was flying to St. Louis. I got to the Hertz lot in St. Louis and they had no car for me... felt like an idiot!