LIVE24SEVEN // Motoring, Sport & Entertainment K AT E JUS T I C E – MI S S ED F L IGHT S
Have You Ever Missed A Flight?
Kate Justice has… plenty! - There are so many millions of people taking so many millions of flights every day that it must happen quite often. Missing trains or busses is traumatic enough and can ruin plans but the catastrophe of missing a flight, has got to be the worst.
Knowing that a plane is soaring into the air while you are stuck, feeling heavy on earth succumbing to the gravitational pull, is pitiful. I know this, as I have missed many flights.
The first time I missed a flight it was on New Year's Day from Geneva to the UK. This was many years ago and EasyJet was
young. There wasn't another flight until the next day, so I had hotel costs, car park fines at the other end and I missed a day of work - which was stressful (for me and my colleagues) and also expensive. But! I wasn't charged to change the flight and in fact made the most of my extra night in Switzerland. Possibly worse than this a few years later, I didn't double check the departure time for a flight to San Francisco from Heathrow, so thought it was four hours later than it was (until Husband and I were just about to leave). The plane was taking off as we were locking up the house. Amazingly, there was another flight later that day... with spaces... and again no charge to change it. I was 5 months pregnant at the time, so I probably incited some sympathy as I blamed my brain lapse on that.
The first time I travelled from Stanstead, I hugely underestimated the journey time to the airport (isn't it MILES?) and arrived at the check in 20 minutes before departure. In the days before 9/11, it was still possible to get through security in less than three hours. In a wonderful stroke of luck, one of the check-in staff grabbed my bag, while the other grabbed me and we all went charging off in the direction of passport control. Despite the fact that I didn't end up missing the flight, it was still an
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experience I would never like to repeat. Sweating and huffing after sprinting from the car park, I then ran through what felt like the entire airport wearing an enormous 'LATE PASSENGER' sign around my neck which wasn't removed until after I boarded the plane. So everyone already on board, (who had been told they were waiting for one more passenger), knew exactly why I was holding them up. Very awkward!
There are more, similar tales and I clearly need to be more organised. I once missed an entire trip to Sweden because I had inadvertently sent my passport to my accountant with a load of other paperwork.
I know.
I had it on my desk so that I could check in for my flight… but I was also doing the banking.
Another time I was so late leaving the house to get to Birmingham Airport, I ended up having to call the Meet & Greet company and ask them to book me in there and then, as I’d run out of time to get the transport bus from the long-stay. That’s happed twice.
If you’ve never missed a flight, WELL DONE, I envy your timekeeping and if you have, hopefully you’ll now know you are definitely not alone! This is full swing holiday season, so wherever you are jetting off to… please… learn from my mistakes. Someone has to!
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