malbarda

Proof point 1: I had just moved to the UK, and was not yet familiar with the 12 hour clock and the AM/PM thing. I verbally instructed my secretary to book a return flight Zurich - Amsterdam at 9:00. I thought she knew I meant in the evening as I had a full day of meetings. I flew out the night before, had all my meetings and went to the airport. Could not find my flights on the board, so went to the KLM desk. There was a sign saying they were gone for the day. I scratched my head, then went over to the Swiss desk only to learn that my flight had been booked for 7:00 AM that morning. Luckily, we had a wonderful travel agency working for my company and they re-booked me on Lufthansa and I flew back via MUC that evening.

Proof point 2: I flew to Moscow, had a full week of meetings and on a rainy Friday afternoon made my 3 hour journey through traffic from hell to the airport. I was in a limo, booked by our Moscow office, and had a driver who spoke no English. I arrived at the airport, did not immediately recognize it as the airport I had arrived at days earlier, but thought it might be an arrivals vs. departures hall difference. Went inside and did not find my flight. Turns out, I was (of course) at the wrong Moscow airport. My BA flight to London was flying out of the other (I can't remember if it was Domodedovo and/or Sheremetyevo, but I had arrived at one and was attempting to take my return, wrongly, from the other). Given the hellish traffic, there was no way I was going to make it, so again, called our travel agency and they rebooked me on Austrian via VIE. This worked out well, although the plane was full of somewhat intoxicated Russians on their way to a football finale of sorts (Europe League or Champions League). On the upside, my mistake allowed me to buy a Sacher Torte (or five) at the airport on my lay-over.

SayItAintSo

Booked super cheap trip with some friends from Toronto to Pisa on BA return (like $800 CAD) in the middle of summer. The connection back through Gatwick was brutal however, landing at 10pm then leaving at 2pm the following day or something like that.

So I decided to be smart and convinced the group to buy one-way tickets on Easyjet from Pisa to London for $150 on a flight that would arrive at 6pm. The main sales pitch was us being able to hit up some pubs and get a good night sleep in a hotel before travelling home the next day.

We landed in London without incident a little after 6pm and were almost downtown on the train when, when someone suddenly mentioned - "Wait a minute.. will BA cancel our tickets for the final leg back to Canada because we were a no-show in Pisa?"

Seriously thinking my friends were going to kill me and dump my body at the next station, I suggested we race back to the airport to try to make it before the check-in time of the flight back in Pisa.

We arrived a heaving, panting mess at the BA counter, the agent making sure she took her time (15 minutes or so), to read the entire BA manifesto on ticket rules. After what seemed an eternity, she finally announced in a bored voice that we should be fine as we had JUST made the cut-off and our tickets would not be cancelled.

This time on the train ride downtown, my high-five was not returned. I also had to buy the first round before anyone would speak to me again. LOL

jesternl

Didn't happen to me, but a well traveled colleague of mine.
you know how yo press the button in an elevator and just go off whenever it stops, , without checking the floor you are actually on?

well.. my colleague did that when the airplane made a stop... he was supposed to stay on

phkc070408

My wife and I got married in 2010. I just assumed that her last name legally changed when we got married and that the marriage certificate was also the record of name change. We took a small honeymoon (5 hour drive) right after the wedding and then took a bigger trip to the UK and France the following year (we are US residents). Had we planned on taking the trip across the pond right after we tied the knot, I probably would have booked the plane tickets using her married name, yet her passport and other ID would still show her old (still actually correct) last name. Considered we booked non-refundable J class tickets, and we got a really good deal since we booked almost 8 months out, I would have peen pretty upset to find out at the airport that we have to book her a new ticket 2.5 hours before departure.

While I didn't actually make the mistake, it was only a matter of luck.

helvetic

Wow, you lucked out on that one!

I once forgot my passport in a hotel (somehow set it down on a small shelf so inconspicuous I didn't check it on my room check on the way out)… also always leave it in a dedicated backpack pocket but this was earlier in my travel career. Luckily that was the Andaz Tokyo and I was to be back in Tokyo quickly thereafter after a quick trip to Atsugi, so I was able to get it back without issues in a couple days.

helvetic

Pretty sure you would've been fine…

FWIW, I managed to fly with someone with a completely different name than what was on the ticket just a few weeks ago. Booked a flight with a girl, didn't end up coming and brought a different girl instead. First girl was Chinese, second was Korean… at check-in just told them there was a mix-up and she's traveling on her "Korean passport" while her ticket shows her "Chinese name" … even though they were totally different people. Europeans don't see a lot of Asians and don't want to offend…

knownothing

1) Mexico. Agent told me (maybe language problem) wrong gate. Sat there with daughter and 15 min before take off wondered why nobody there. Went and looked and the correct gate was 12 min away. Got there just in time.

2) Fell asleep in lounge with no announcements. Woke up 30 min after flight left. Agent laughed and rebooked for several hours later

737Av8tor

I'm supposed to be travel savvy: airline Captain with 40+ years experience.
I was travelling to Rimini from the UK, so booked a flight to the nearest airport, Bologna Forli.
Needed a car while I was there so booked through Sixt, fortunately, i was a member of their club at the time.
Turned up at the desk at Forli and they had no record of my reservation: I'd only made the reservation at the main Bologna airport!
Fortunately, they had cars available at Forli and sorted it out for me!

That though is minor compared to some of the things I have seen!

radonc1

Painfully true story.
Was flying back in the 90's with my wife and 3 children from CLE-LAX. CO had overbooked the flight and needed 5 seats and we were in no rush and would take the next flight which was 6 hours later. We received $500 per person for the delay along with first class seats and meal vouchers. Sounded like a win to me. At that time, all compensation was in paper form.

Take the trip, get home and toss the sleeve holding my now used boarding passes and the vouchers.

I tossed $2500 in the trash and there was no way to recover it.

TechnoTourist

Flying home from Managua yesterday. Flight was at 6:20 so I left my hotel in Leon at 2am when the bar closed and took the 2 hour taxi ride to MGA. Arrived before security was open so sat down to wait and mistakenly felt asleep. Woke up at 6, rushed through exit customs and security and ran to the gate. The agents said the flight was closed but after what seemed like an eternity and multiple overrides on the computer I had new boarding passes and was let on.

DutchessPDX

We had a connecting flight in MEX to OAX on Interjet. I find MEX domestic terminal a little confusing they have the halls labeled alphabetically and then the gates are numbered sequentially. We were waiting and waiting and waiting for a gate to be assigned to our flight. Checking the board every other flight on the board had a gate number next to it. Ours had a letters AB (or something) and when we asked information they said it meant they were waiting for a gate to be assigned. At some point it change to H, but still no number like any of the other gates listed on the board. Finally it was like 20 min to take off and there was no change. By luck we heard someone else ask the information booth and it turns out there was a single gate in the entire airport labeled with a letter!!! We were at the wrong end of the terminal. We hauled butt down the corridor and barely made it on the flight as they were about to close the door.

knownothing

Not so dumb. Same happened to me

threeoh

The number of times I've been confused by a gate or left to do a mad dash as the gate is published right before the boarding cut-off in MEX is astounding. It's not that hard: give each gate a unique number, and post that number more than 30 minutes before the flight. Every other airport does it!

Finkface

Back in the late ‘90s, UA used to send out paper vouchers when you redeemed miles for flights. I can’t remember exactly how it worked but I believe it was one paper voucher per flight leg or something. I had some UA miles that were going to expire so I redeemed them for flights and the vouchers were mailed off to me.

Now we had a puppy who just loved to eat the mail when it was pushed through the mail slot in our front door. The stand-alone mailbox had been sitting on the table for weeks waiting for Mr. Fink to install it. He was home the week they were due to arrive so I warned him the UA letter was coming probably that day and he darn well better make sure the dog didn’t eat it (the dog was kept in a different part of the house if we weren’t home) as I could not replace them. Do I even need to tell you what happened?

Fortunately, UA was pretty good about it and replaced them for me as I had a few remaining shards of the paper (it had four perforated ticket-sized vouchers) and was able to read off some of the numbers. I won’t tell you how we managed to recover some more of the bits of paper to piece them together enough to read but let’s just say I gave Mr. Fink sh!t for not listening.

IanFromHKG

That brings back some hilarious memories! We went with friends to that resort many years ago (more than two decades, I know, as it was the years BC) and the food was dreadful. One of our friends was vegetarian, and had a gluten intolerance. So that was easy...!! She was (is) also a fitness fanatic, so had been saving up to have a special treat on her last day - a knickerbocker glory. When it arrived, it contained not just the usual ice-cream, nuts, chocolate sauce and so forth, but sweetcorn and red beans. She was deeply unimpressed!

My own classic dumb travel-related mistake: The Memsahib and I (again in the years BC) were piling into a taxi from our little maisonette in Clapham. Now in those days Clapham was (to put it politely) a rather down-at-heel part of London. It was the best I could afford, but the off-licence (liquor store) in the high street was basically a cage - all goods, and money, had to be passed through a small aperture in a lot of metal fencing - and at around the same time there were major riots in the neighbouring area (Brixton). I had once borrowed my father's little runabout (a Mini Metro - dreadful car) and parked it outside - it was broken into (one night) and nicked (the next night). All in all, not the safest part of London.

Anyway, there we are about to fly off on our hols, but as I was about to close the taxi door I realised I had forgotten something, so dashed back into the maisonette to fetch it, and rushed back into the taxi.

When we returned from holiday a week later, our downstairs neighbours saw us arriving, came out and told us rather nervously that after two days they had thought it best to close our front door, and hoped we had the keys...