spearsba

In the late 80s I was stationed in South Korea. I booked a flight home for Christmas at GMP. I showed up to take my flight and was promptly told by the ticket agent that my reservation was for the previous day. That day's flight was full, but she managed to get me on the next day's flight.

Kensterfly

What a disappointing bummer!

But thank you for your service!

GW McLintock

Had a big event for my department today, and they told me to rent the truck. Since I get tomorrow off, I decided I better take my laptop with me, since I'd be going straight back to JFK to return the car after the event. As we were pulling into Kew Gardens on the crew shuttle tonight, I realized I left my laptop in the pocket behind the driver's seat So back to JFK I went.

Turns out they rented the car back out seven minutes before I got there

But they got the cleaner. And he had taken the computer out of the car and brought it in! Great job Hertz JFK, even if their cars suck and the lines are long they have awesome staff ^^

I guess this officially makes me a "business traveler."

-J.

MikeNJ1109

Pre 9/11, had a quick one day trip from EWR to YYZ. Waiting on line at the gate for the ID check, the clown -- sorry, customer -- ahead of me was having a spirited discussion with the gate agent re: her not having a Passport. "Why do I need a passport, as we're only going to Canada?"

To say she didn't get on the flight would be the understatement of the year.

Michael

ajGoes

I don't get it. If she was an American citizen, she didn't need a passport for travel to Canada. The gate agent must have known that.

Scrudgy

My brother in law had a short work contract in Cape Town, and the company flew him and his wife and two kids down with business class returns for all.

After his 6 week assignment was complete they took another couple of weeks to tour South Africa before returning to the UK.

Only when preparing to leave did they realise they had missed their return to the UK, not by one day - but two!

Also had to stump up money for 4 x economy tickets instead of the J tickets the company paid for.

chgoeditor

Maybe the "9/11" in this case refers to some period after passports became mandatory in 2009 but before September 2011.

ajGoes

I'll be darned. I was certain that the passport requirement was part of the post-9/11 hysteria. Thanks for clearing that up.

chgoeditor

You're right, in a sense. It just took years to implement the requirement after the 9/11 Commission recommended it. But you still did write "pre 9/11" in your original post.

ysolde

When I was a kid, my dad and I were traveling Europe in July 1979. He thought we were flying from London to Madrid on July 28, arriving around noonish, and called my grandparents from our hotel in London on the 27th to confirm. He told them not to pick us up at the airport; we would catch a cab from Barajas to our hotel and call them up. Later that evening, as he checked our plane tickets, he realized our flight actually left on the 29th. Back then, calling from the hotel was a major pain (not to mention expensive), so he figured no big deal.

He made arrangements to stay in the hotel an extra day, and we spent the 28th at the British Museum (I was already a bit of a nerd, and had gone nuts over all the Roman artifacts, particularly the jewelry). Well, we did not turn on the TV that day (there were few channels back then), and did not notice this had happened:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1979_Madrid_bombings

So my father did not call his parents or other family members to let them know we were all right. His brother in law had spent the day going to different hospitals, to see if we had been injured.

When we arrived the next day (a bit of an ordeal in itself), my father's relatives cried and then lectured him, and then cried some more.

pinniped

Maybe not dumbest ever, but this happened to me today.


A few weeks ago, during a Southwest fare sale, I booked my wife and I on a one-way flight MCI-MDW for tomorrow afternoon.

Dumb thing #1: I totally forget about it until T-23 hours until check-in. Got BP's B42 and B43, so I'm already thinking about how far back in the plane we'll be...but still cautiously optimistic that we'll get window-middle together in the back.

Dumb thing #2: Then, an hour later, I get an alert from Award Wallet to check in for my British Airways flight tomorrow. W T F?!? So I open the email to find that I've *also* booked MCI-ORD on AA tomorrow, using Avios.

Logging in to my BA account, I find that I booked this flight...and digging through old emails I find that I did it about 9 months ago! I completely don't remember it at all.

Sadly, it then takes a phone call to AA to get the FF# placed in the reservation, and I've probably missed out on any slim shot of an upgrade, but at least the WN back-of-the-bus experience won't have to happen and we'll use the WN credit to fly some other time.



On the plus side, the ORD-ORD rental car is $50 cheaper than the MDW-ORD rental car. (We're flying home out of ORD...that much I actually remember... )

Phaze

Flying BA.

MikeNJ1109

Airline policy was proof of citizenship in order to board, specifically a passport. Her drivers license was not proof of citizenship.

pinniped

I personally know at least a couple people who missed flights to Canada around that time. Experienced international travelers....thankfully ones who could go home, get their passport, and get to Canada a couple hours late.

In fact, I only found out about the rule because 3 days before one of my Toronto trips, a colleague missed his flight because he didn't have his passport.

None of us were international travel n00bs, but none of us spend a lot of time on State Department websites either. Airlines aren't compelled to advertise these kinds of changes on their front pages (and they didn't), so I suspect a lot of people found out about this particular change the hard way. Especially if you booked the flight before the rule went into effect but were traveling after it.

MikeNJ1109

IIRC, prior to the events of 14 years ago, airlines (most? all? some?) did not want to be stuck returning passengers to their point of origin if they didn't have proper travel documents (i.e passport) to enter a particular country. Every flight I took to Canada in those days (AC, CO, US) required passengers to show passports or be refused boarding.

Michae