Travel can be a great experience until it’s not. It’s wonderful when everything falls easily into place, but unfortunately that doesn’t always happen. In real life the unexpected can occur and not always for the good. This can be particularly true of flying. Sometimes, however, what may seem like a problem ends up to be another great adventure. Other times they are just that, problems. Over my years of traveling I have had my share of challenges. Here are a couple of misadventures I have had.
If you are a faithful reader of my blog you know that this past year my great misadventure was missing my connecting flight in Johannesburg, South Africa to Malawi. It was a rather traumatizing experience for me. The previous year I had traveled through the Johannesburg airport on my trip to Zambia so it felt somewhat familiar to me, and I felt confident in what I needed to do.
When I arrived at the airport, I wanted to get my bearings so I checked for my gate number and went to make sure I knew where it was located. It was close to the main part of the terminal. People were sitting there waiting or talking. No one seemed to be ready to board the plane, and I thought I had at least a half hour before the scheduled boarding time.
I decided to go to the bathroom and freshen up a bit after my long overnight flight from New York. After a quick stop to email my wife and let her know I had arrived safely, I headed to the restroom. Feeling a little more fresh I returned to the gate and to my shock found an empty gate. I was confused. Where was everyone? Walking over to a nearby gate I asked the agent there where everyone was, and he told me the plane had left. I was stunned. I couldn’t believe that had happened. It seemed like I had only been gone 20 minutes or so. What was I supposed to do now?
The agent directed me back to the reservation area which I had previously passed. In a daze I returned there and talked to a nice young man from South African Airways. I think he could tell that I was upset and emotional so he tried to calm me down. Checking things out he determined that my flight from New York had arrived late so he felt it was the airline’s fault that I had missed my flight. I’m not sure that was true, but I was grateful when he said the airline would take care of it.
First he tried to get me on a flight to Malawi that afternoon with another airline. He sent me down to their desk. That agent was busy working on an issue with another person, and so I waited for some time. When he finally helped me, he said he couldn’t book me because of some missing paper work and sent me back to the original agent. Back I went, and they tried again. I never did figure out what the problem was, but after a fairly long wait, I was told I was unable to get on that flight.
In the meantime I was sitting around frustrated and anxious. I had emailed my wife to tell her what had happened, and she was worried for me. More importantly I was trying to figure out how to get in touch with Bern, my contact in Malawi who was going to pick me up at the airport. I sent a number of frantic emails without any response, and wasn’t sure what to do. I was thinking I might have to call him, but I wasn’t sure if I could do that internationally with my phone.
Eventually I did get a response from Bern. That relieved some of my anxiety as I knew he wouldn’t be at the airport wondering what happened to me. Then I was concerned that my luggage would be there, and that Bern would have to pick it up, but the agent told me it had been pulled off the plane.
Finally the agent informed me that they would have to put me on the flight to Malawi the next day. He set me up in a nearby hotel with three meals all paid for by South African Airlines. The agent then explained that outside the airport there was a van that comes around and takes people to the hotel. He also assured me I could enter and leave South Africa with no problems. I wouldn’t need a visa.
Now I was nervous about getting to the hotel. His directions about the van were not totally clear to me, but I made my way back, found my suitcase, easily passed through immigration, and then went outside. Coming out of the terminal, I was immediately greeted by people wanting to help me. I tried to wave them away as I never know how to pay them, but one young man persisted. I told him I had no South African money, but he continued to offer his assistance. He led me over to where the vans came. I gave him two American dollars. I’m not sure he liked that, but it was all that I could do, and I did appreciate his help.
The hotel turned out to be very nice. After checking into my room, I went for lunch which was a very nice buffet. Then I took a long nap after my stressful morning. I didn’t leave the hotel area as I wasn’t familiar with where I was, and it seemed more of an industrial section of town so nothing worth visiting. Dinner and then breakfast the following morning were also buffet affairs, and the food was excellent. By the following morning I was feeling rested and ready to continue my journey.
The agent had advised me to be at the airport early in the morning as lines could be long, but when the van dropped me off, I whizzed through immigration in a few minutes. I then had a long wait for my flight, but this time I didn’t miss it, and I finally arrived in Malawi to begin my adventure there.
Thirty years earlier I had endured another challenging experience. In the 70s I lived in the Dominican Republic for four years teaching at a Christian school. A number of years after returning to the US, I organized a group from my church to go to the Dominican Republic to help build a church. That turned out to be quite an experience in itself. The way they did construction was not the same as the American way so the work did not proceed as quickly as we had hoped. However, we could not stay forever to finish so we had to leave when our time was up.
There were about 15 people in our group, and we arrived at the Santo Domingo airport in plenty of time. I went up to the desk and told the agent I was checking in my group. He looked over his list and said we had no reservations. Shocked, I asked him to check again. Still nothing. I began to panic.
Fortunately we had been driven to the airport by Dan, a young man who had grown up in the Dominican. His Spanish was better than mine so he came to my assistance. I said that I knew we had reservations as we had flown down so there had to be a return flight. My friend Dan took over the conversation trying to understand what had happened and how to fix it.
In the meantime I was frantically trying to figure out what to do. First I tried to keep everyone calm. Then I needed to figure out our next step. The agent indicated that there might be a few seats available, but probably not enough for everyone. With that in mind, I began to consider who might be willing to stay an extra night or fly a different flight and how I could arrange all this. At this time there were no cell phones or computers so communication was more challenging. I was concerned about families back home expecting the team members to return on time.
Dan and the agent finally determined that our reservations had all been cancelled two days earlier. Apparently we had not called to confirm our reservations so they had decided we were not coming. Confirming flights had been a common practice years earlier, but were no longer needed in the US. Apparently they were still expected here especially with a larger group. I had not even thought to do that.
Knowing the reason didn’t automatically fix the problem. However, it did make it clear that we had paid for tickets. In the end they managed to find seats for everyone on the flight although many of us were in the very back. Once they assigned us our seats, we took off quickly as the flight was nearing departure.
As we were leaving the reservation area, a family approached the desk. I remember hearing loud words of protest from them, but I didn’t look back. Maybe we had been assigned their seats. I’ll never know. I felt a twinge of guilt, but I was just glad to get everyone on the flight headed for home. I didn’t want to be responsible for leaving anyone behind.
Have you had any problems with a flight? I’d love to hear your story of any flight misadventures in the comment box below.