Airports People You Will Never See Again
Subsequently thousands of passengers were left without their baggage due to a conveyor belt glitch at Heathrow airport this calendar week, we asked you to share some of your airport horror stories.
Many of you shared anecdotes we could all chronicle to. From delayed flights to lost luggage and even a child apparently wanted by Interpol, you had it all.
But some of you merely actually took the beige. Hither are your almost agonising stories from airports effectually the world.
Poodunnit?
It turns out airports are a ripe ground for scatological tales of woe. So many of y'all had stories about number twos, some of y'all in actual airspace. But our favourite of all comes from torujordan, whose tale of desperation should resonate with anybody.
On a trip to Kingdom of morocco my girlfriend and I were characteristically late for the return flight. We had traveled past bus from Chefchauen, a well known cannabis producing region, to the capital, Rabat, and it had been a rather long uncomfortable journey. Information technology was made a lot worse past the fact that for the last couple of days i had had a rather "loose" stomach.
We got to the airport with about forty minuted until our flight took off, then nosotros rushed through cheque in, changed what petty coin we had left, pushed to the front end of the passport queue and then tried to get through security. At that betoken, we were rather flushed from all the rushing, and I, more than I previously thought was possible, needed the toilet.
Inevitably, the guy in security pulled us to one side to take a closer look at our bags. And after emptying everything decided he should get another security baby-sit to take a further await. I then made the mistake of telling him that I very much would like to go to the toilet while we waited considering i had quite a bad stomach. He asked if i had taken whatsoever affair to which i replied, i have -- some Imodium -- just it hadn't helped. He then asked if i needed to have a doctor to check out my stomach, I said that i was OK, I just really needed to toilet.
I so realised that we had very unlike understandings of what was wrong. Telling me that he knew that I came to the aerodrome from Chefchauen - he must have checked my exit visa or guessed - he suggested that my bad breadbasket might exist something to practise with all the drugs I had taken or was smuggling in my tummy. I was looked nervous he told me. I tried to explain that I needed the loo. At that point, out came two armed constabulary officers with sniffer dogs, and we were dragged to the corner of security and we waited, confident if a little nervous, for them to check out our bags.
I then got taken to an interview room, where a law officer poked at my stomach while quizzing me about my drug consumption habits. I told him that "of grade there is cannabis in Chefcauen" -- you get offered information technology all the time -- only "of class i didn't take whatever." He then said, after a little conferring, that I I would have to expect while they establish a doctor to "examine me." I tried to explain, once more, that this was a big misunderstanding and I merely needed to go to the toilet simply the more I remonstrated the more it seemed inevitable that i would end up with a latex gloved hand exploring my most intimate parts.
We waited, my girlfriend in tears; the police at present were giggling and taking what seemed to be a remarkable amount of joy from our misery. Eventually somebody arrived to examine me: the original security officers. I asked about their medical credentials only i was told i didn't accept a choice.
Circular the corner I went with him. We stopped outside a disabled toilet and he pointed to the door. Finally! I thought. And and then it became obvious that the disabled toilets were in fact the examining room and he was coming in with me. He then told me that he was going to check if i was lying or not and told me that if i needed to go i should go now in a rather threatening tone, although he might have just been pissed off that he had drawn the curt-straw of watching me defecate.
I was just about to ask if he could leave me alone while i went, but i no longer cared. Downward came my trousers, and while I enjoyed an explosive, thundering poo, my bottom turning temporarily into an droplets of faeces, i looked up at him and with a smug smile that said "well i did tell you lot." After a minute or and then, he left me to it. And past the time i returned my girlfriend was packing our numberless once more, still a little shaken and uncertain equally to where they had taken me.
The aeroplane ended upwards being delayed, and then nosotros even got our flight. But it'southward taught me a lot. There are ever bastard cops where ever you lot are; learning your rights is upward there with remembering your passport; and make certain you carry coin in instance you lot need to bribe somebody in a disabled toilet in an drome in order to become habitation.
Excuse me sir, merely those aren't your glasses
How do you wind up the police in Bilbao? By accidentally picking up some other passenger's specs.
Bilbao Airport (the new one) about 8-ix years ago. Going through the security scanner I was called back by one of the police security hovering around at the finish who handed me a pair of magnifying glasses that were sitting at the stop of the conveyor belt where I'd just picked my purse up. I said thank you and wandered off with my family and a friend to the buffet.
About fifteen minutes later my brother said "I think those 3 annoyed looking policemen are pointing at y'all"!
It seems I'd mistakenly taken the spectacles that belonged to someone else by mistake (I did honestly accept a pair with me, I idea they'd fallen out my bag) and he was standing there with the policemen who came over to our table and started pointing and gesticulating at me and the glasses.
I don't speak Spanish, neither did anyone else with me, the whole cafe was silent and staring at u.s.a. but fortunately, the chap whose glasses I'd accidentally taken was German language and did speak Castilian, he also spoke excellent English. He was very nice and accepted my massively cherry-red-faced amends that I truly had taken them by accident and left with the three policemen who glared at me equally they departed.
A rather uncomfortable experience at the time, non certain it warranted three police officers, but we laugh most it at present..........!
Cheesy socks (literally)
Anything to declare? Oh aught much, merely a suitcase full of melted cheese.
Berlin in the height of summer. Connecting flight cancelled on the rails, so I missed the international difference from Frankfurt to Tokyo.
The big trouble was the big selection of European cheeses I had placed in the suitcase, which was sent to who knows where. When we were finally reunited the hard cheeses were soft and the soft cheeses were liquid. And the stench accomplished the about impossible chore of completely overwhelming my calendar week's drove of used socks.
Wrong flight
Where at that place is a horror story, at that place is usually a hero. In this case, Ecosse264 would be just that in this tale of a flight booking gone horribly incorrect.
My best friend and I were on the last stage of our world trip and in Cusco we visited a LAN Republic of peru office to change our terminal flight dwelling house by a day or so. The side by side twenty-four hour period nosotros noticed that my friend'southward connecting flying in London to Newcastle was wrong - they had booked her connection a YEAR afterwards she landed at LHR.
The LAN part in Cusco was closed for Easter, so we tried to alter the ticket online (it was a BA, One Globe brotherhood ticket) but no joy. Unfazed nosotros flew from Cusco to Lima to catch our flying to the UK thinking we could sort this out with LAN at Lima. Hahahahaa...
3 hours - and one shift alter - later, we were even so arguing with LAN about the error. They were adamant they would not modify it, despite seeing that the original connectedness was the same day and that their colleague had made the fault!
Frustrated at the complete ineptitude of LAN, and with a very angry, shouty best mate losing her rag ('I HATE THIS COUNTRY') I decided to practice what all good PAs do: sort it out. I hopped online and booked my friend a BMi flying to Newcastle, I then called British Airways. Information technology was not inexpensive, however, I got a very nice lady in the Great britain who took notation of my issue, that we had spent more money on a flight, and that we were displeased. Ah, Great britain.
It took 4 months of letters to get the flying connection refunded and an amends from LAN, however.....she got habitation!!
Don't go cocky
Who knew Han Solo could cause such offence? A cautionary tale for y'all novelty t-shirt aficionados out there.
Just another i -
On our flight out to Thailand for our honeymoon, Mr E got stopped at Heathrow security equally he was deemed to be causing offence to other passengers. His crime? Wearing at t-shirt with a picture of a Lego Han Solo and the words "Don't get Cocky!"
We never plant out what chemical element caused offence; the Lego, the Stars Wars theme, simply whatever it was he had to wear his t-shirt within out while were in the terminal.
The staff on the our Thai Air flying must have though we were absolute freaks when we asked them if they had whatsoever issues with him wearing his t-shit the right style round when we got on the flying
Travel karma
"Never laugh at somebody's travel misfortune," writes NotSingingAnymore. On 2d thoughts, we probably should have put this one first...
A friend was flying in from Canada to encounter united states in Lisbon. "We" were a football team flying from Switzerland and planned to meet said friend in the drome on inflow. He never turned up - his connecting aeroplane from Heathrow was diverted to Porto when 1 of the other passengers had a cardiac arrest. He eventually met us at the hotel simply had no baggage, which had been lost in transit at Heathrow. He waited the requisite iii days without luggage before hitting the fashion shops to buy underwear etc. His plight gave usa much amusement.
On the fashion dorsum the friend was travelling to Hong Kong every bit he'd been moved to that office. We waited for the EasyJet flying back to Basel as he boarded his HK flight in business class. Abiding delayed letters alerted to u.s. an issue with our flight and when we eventually took our seats we were 5 hours late. Basel won't permit landings after midnight. Easyjet decided to send us to Lyon instead (which the tannoy insisted "is near Basel" - it isn't). We got shunted on to a rickety bus at 2 a.one thousand. and trundled to Basel, arriving exhausted at 07:50 a.grand. (x minutes before the deadline at which EasyJet would accept owed u.s. bounty).
At this point I received a text from the friend who had headed off to Hong Kong. He had landed on time and had been seated next to Alice Cooper, a fascinating companion who was happy (over a large quantity of Jack Daniels & coke) to share stories of classic albums and touring shenanigans.
Never laugh at somebody's travelling misfortune, instant karma's gonna' go y'all.
We can return your documents... for a fee
UK Border Control queues are a doddle compared to this story.
Dorsum in the late 1980s, when I was in my early 20s, I had to modify planes at Kinshasa, capital of the then Zaire, now DR Congo. It was a brief stopover of 2 or three hours, which I should accept spent in the heat and grime of what the airport staff referred to, with a directly face, as the transit lounge.
Inside a few minutes of arriving in said lounge, a human came up to me, flashed his police ID, and demanded to see my passport and ticket. After inspecting them, he put them in his pocket, and told me to follow him.
We went downstairs, out through customs and immigration without pausing, and into the airport police station. I was taken into an interrogation room, where we were joined by two of my new friend'south colleagues.
They kindly offered to assistance me, for a minor fee, in boarding my flying, an offer I politely declined on the grounds my ticket was in order. They and then offered, in substitution for a like consideration, to ensure that my checked baggage was loaded onto the plane, and again I thanked them very much, but said I was sure everything would be fine. At one point, I said I had footling cash, but they told me they accepted travellers cheques.
This dance went on for hours, with all of us pretending the officers weren't demanding bribes to let me go, and my stubbornly refusing to take advantage of their offers of assistance. Eventually, my plane landed, and they gave up.
I constitute myself at the bottom of the 747'southward steps, arguing with motel crew, who, understandably, weren't keen to let me lath without a passport or ticket. Eventually, a constabulary officer shambled across the tarmac and returned my documents.
It was only when I settled into my seat that I realised what a fool I'd been. What felt at the fourth dimension similar a game -- which I'd won! -- could take acquired me real problems. For the sake of £xx (though that really was a lot to me dorsum and then), I'd risked missing my aeroplane, and possibly spending time in a Zairian jail. How long would it have taken the British consul to detect I was missing -- and then find me? What might have happened to me in my cell during that time?
Just I was young, naive and it was my first time out of Europe. Thank God the on-board booze in cattle class was free back then. Otherwise, I'd have diddled £20 on getting drunkard.
That flight has been delayed and you won't make the connection
Flying home to San Francisco, my Rome-Frankfurt flight was delayed due to bad weather condition at Frankfurt drome. When we finally landed at that place was no gate bachelor, and then the plane was parked on the tarmac - coincidentally right next to the Frankfurt-San Francisco aeroplane I was supposed to transfer to - and a bus came to shuttle u.s. to an airdrome entrance. The motorbus naturally drove us equally far away every bit information technology could, from where I sprinted the length of the airport, arriving at the gate merely as the terminal passengers were boarding. The post-obit conversation ensued:
Amanuensis: Which flight are you coming from?
Self: Rome.
Agent: I'chiliad pitiful sir, that flight has been delayed and yous won't make the connection.
Self: But I take made the connection - I'grand here. I don't fifty-fifty have whatever baggage - only me, here, now.
Agent: But yous cannot be.
Self: But I am.
Agent: Just you cannot exist.
Self: But I am - await!
Amanuensis: But yous cannot exist.
Cocky: But ...
No amount of argument could persuade the agent that I was indeed at that place; the doors airtight, and the half-empty flight left without me.
Where's grandma's flight?
Terrifying as this feel must have been at the time, parts of hert1883's story are truly heartwarming.
Around 20 years agone my grandma was making the trip from Red china to join usa in the UK.
She was in her 70s, couldn't speak a give-and-take of English language, spoke Mandarin with a strong accent and was illiterate. So we booked her into a direct flight and my parents and I (I was seven and so) waited dutifully at Heathrow for her to get in.
Except her flight didn't make it. At first it was labelled 'delayed'. This continued for hours. Then it simply disappeared from the boards. My parents, with their broken English, were panicked. Nosotros slept on the floor in Heathrow airport that night as they struggled to locate the aeroplane. The first of many nights I have since spent in airports and definitely the most scary.
Around 36 hours later we plant out the aeroplane had been held up somewhere and we, equally Chinese people did in those days, sought the help of the Chinese Embassy. The Diplomatic mission really provided us with accommodation for ii further nights until my grandma arrived at Heathrow, 3 days belatedly, merely happy, salubrious and completely unruffled and unconcerned.
She said she'd had a nice time with some ladies from some other province in China who'd looked after her and we had nothing to worry about. She wasn't sure what had happened but they'd landed somewhere and she'd been given a place to stay and good food. She's fifty-fifty made practiced enough friends to give a few of the ladies our address, which my mum had written down for her. A few months later, we received a letter of the alphabet from i of these ladies with a photograph of my grandma standing in front end of St Basil'due south Cathedral in Moscow.
My grandma passed away in 2009. This is the main moving picture of her my parents still brandish on their mantelpiece.
We're really sad, but we've dropped your wheelchair
As ID9528033 puts it, lost baggage is zip compared to travelling while in a wheelchair.
Oh all these stories of luggage, the prospect of men with safety gloves...you obviously have never travelled! Endeavor beingness in a wheelchair.
I have a story for every fourth dimension I have flown with my power wheelchair, from the very helpful checkin lady in Vegas enervating that I attempt and walk (really? I'd never thought of that? Let me give it a become merely for you), to the Paratransit coach that had a lift that failed with me within the autobus, as we're parked outside the aerodrome and the divergence time getting ever closer.
However, at that place is one that will remain with us for all time. Flight from Vancouver Airport to Orlando for a massive family unit holiday. We are on the plane and the cabin coiffure ask my hubby if he tin can stride off the plane to talk to the ground staff. Cipher new hither, we've been asked before to evidence them how to make sure the battery is off. My married man is gone for a little longer than I would have idea...and the cabin coiffure come up back and enquire for our address in Florida. Hmmmm. Not normal.
My ashen faced husband gets dorsum on the plane to tell me that they have dropped my $25k custom built power wheelchair from 20ft onto physical and it is destroyed. And we're on our way to our holiday...
To cut a very long story short, the holiday was painful - you can't just rent a replacement chair - so I mean literally painful with the chair that I had. It took v months before everything was finished.
It was the airline's responsibility, simply non their fault - Vancouver ground crew put it in a freight elevator without putting brakes on and leaving the back door of the elevator open. 350lb of chair flight through the air...could accept killed someone.
The airline, WestJet, were wonderful and did everything they could and I ended upward with a lifelong friend from their mobility specialist in customer service. And they replaced the chair, without us ever having a crossed word anywhere in the proceedings.
Has information technology put me off flying? Nah, flying over again this year with WestJet. My mobility specialist friend already has the flights marked on her calendar...I've said I await the chair to exist wrapped in industrial strength bubble wrap!
Your baggage is late? No worries!!!!!
Comment is free: simply facts Die Hard
An honourable mention in our bonus eleventh entry goes to Midwinter, whose real proper noun we can but assume is John McClane. Yes, this annotate is the entire plot of Dice Hard Ii. The header, from Midwinter'south follow upward comment, is a stroke of genius too. Well played.
And so this would have been around 1990. It was Christmas Eve and I'd gone to Washington Dulles Drome to pick up my wife, who was flying in from LA (where she worked at the time). I don't know if you retrieve that winter, but information technology was a cold 1, and the drome was about snowbound. Delays were expected.
To amuse myself, I had a couple of drinks at the airport bar. While I was there I spotted what I idea was a dodgy looking character. Intrigued, I followed him into the baggage claim hall, where I was appalled to encounter that the man was both carrying a gun, and seemed to interfering with some luggage due to be loaded upwardly onto 1 of the plans. I was armed myself, and -- as is common in these situations -- a shootout ensured, in which I killed i of the men. On reporting to airport security, I was appalled to discover that the human being (whose ID I took) was a mercenary, supposedly killed in action a few years back. As you can imagine, I was even more suspicious than ever.
Well, my suspicions were proved correct. Not long after that, a terrorist prison cell seized command of air traffic command and threatened to crash planes into the ground unless the dictator of their South American homeland -- and so in jail in the US on drug charges -- was released from custody. To their credit, airport security called in SWAT to endeavour and take the terrorists out, but it was a disaster. The SWAT team were massacred, and the terrorists went alee and crashed a aeroplane into the runway. At that place was over 200 people on board!
Really, it was a scrap of a downer.
Anyway, realising my wife was in danger and that the government weren't going to solve the situation, I took matters into my ain hands. To cut a long story curt, I found the terrorists, killed them all and blew up their plane. Then I ran out onto the runway in the snow, and hailed downwardly the remaining planes, saving thousands.
The irony is that just the previous year I'd had to bargain with a similar terrorist threat at my wife'southward workplace in LA. I hateful, honestly, how tin can the same thing happen to the same guy twice?
There are plenty more we could have picked, and then head over to this thread for more. Every bit always, feel gratuitous to share your own below.
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2014/jul/02/ten-airport-horror-stories-never-want-to-fly-again
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