To ask for your holiday airport disasters (lighthearted)

[Snooks1971]

Just that really! Mine isn’t a disaster more of a mishap, but my shoulders definitely hunched up next to my ears at the time due to a combination of stress, late hour, busy airport, after 2 hours on a hot coach transfer on the way back to UK....
Anyway I digress
Older ds 14 announced a headache. Ok, here’s 2 paracetamol says I and you can swallow them with the coke from the very over priced airport Subway, already purchased.
DS puts one paracetamol in his mouth, leans forward and picks up Coke bottle for a swig, accidentally drops paracetamol in bottle of coke from stupid open teenage gurning gob. Can you guess the rest?

At the time my inner voice thought it was funny but my inner voice was also very quiet at that moment. Now I can see the funny side! Please share....

Out of season so no direct flights coming home, had been to visit fiance in Crete. At heraklion airport unattended bag at departure gate meant everyone had to evacuate until owner could be found.

Connection to Hamburg just after the terrorist incident in France. Sat waiting to board with minutes to go when alarm sounds and airport security and police run in and remove two men due to visa issues. 4 hours later board flight, arrive Heathrow. Don't even try to wait for suitcase with all my wordly goods and try and leg it to get connection. No chance. On my own country bumpkin thinking wtf? and think night bus! £60 for a cab to get me to Victoria station at 11pm - can't work the ticket machine but kindly worker sees me and gets me on bus. Sat waiting for bus to leave and approached by 4 men asking if I have a light, you're beautiful, I love your country etc. Terrified I scuttle off to toilets - vomit and poo all over rank.

Get on the bus which is full and person I'm sitting with has the most horrendous BO ever known [evny] Finally arrive home 24 hours after I should have and burst into tears of relief! Will never, ever travel out of season again!

Arrive at airport nearest Disneyland Paris after 4 day trip with dh dd 6 and Ds 4, all nackered and confused by airport signage trying to locate check-in desk, flight boards listing all flights as cancelled, dh says you stay here with kids I'll go find it, leaving me with dc, hand luggage x 4 and suitcases. I notice loud voices and look up to see automatic weapon in my face and gendarmes yelling move move in French - I try to say I have two small dc luggage etc but no they insist (and have guns) so I struggle outside as airport being evacuated. I try to call dh only to find phone flat, kids wailing etc maybe 30mins pass and we are allowed back in and dh eventually finds us, apparently a lady thought it was fine to go to the loo but leave her case outside unattended

Dh has found desk we head there and once again, unattended baggage so evacuated from airport. Turns out huge strikes by French air traffic control and ours is the only flight leaving that evening but due to evacuations everyone booked is scattered around the airport so we are eventually bussed out to aircraft sat miles from runways and wait for everyone to be checked in and board before we can leave, about 2 hours later.

Went back to Disneyland Paris few weeks back with dd on the Eurostar- highly recommend

Arrived at destination, wrestled with 18 month old through the airport, she either wanted to run or lie down but absolutely not be carried by any of us . Arrived at the baggage carousel to find our buggy with a crushed, snapped wheel, it couldn't be pushed, dragged, anything it was completely bust.

Spent the next hellish six hours chasing her around (and wondering where the nearest Spanish Mothercare was) until the wonderful hotel staff said they could call a firm who would bring me a hire buggy for a bargain 20 euro. Best money i've ever spent!

My husband got told “he doesn’t look like he does in his passport photo”. The passport was 9 years old but you could tell a mile off it was him. They started questioning DD about “who this man was” meanwhile I’m trying to stop DD2 trashing the airport because she’s feral and doesn’t do well with faffing. DH was getting angrier and I was close to loosing my shit if we were missing our flight home. Having successfully pissed us all off they then told us we could board. I was fuming, my friends still wind my husband up about it and it’s been ten years.

@SimonJT, my colleague who I invited to come on a school trip, was regaling me with stories of the multiple times he's been detained. He's a (beardy) Pakistani Muslim.

On a previous trip, a colleague had forgotten his passport. He's a (beardy!) Somalian Muslim. He thought, as it was 'only' France, that he could blag his way back into the UK with his driving license and a photo of his passport that his mum sent him. He was wrong. I made him go to the Embassy.

Was getting married abroad. Had an extra suitcase with my wedding dress. dh and I were with our friends and their dc. Dh was responsible for tickets. Said go to terminal 1. We get out at terminal 1. We all pile out of cab. I do a last minute count of suitcases. My dress case never made it into the cab! Dh bangs on the taxi as it pulls off. He goes home and comes back. Meanwhile best man marches a chuntering zen from terminal 1 to terminal 2 because dh had been wrong about that. Was a stressful start to wedding.

I have horrendous anxiety around airports and flying. DH is the sensible, calm. Level headed one of us who looks after all the docs, organises us and generally makes sure everyone is where they need to be. I just fall to pieces.

On our flight back from Bourgas he was picked at random for drug screening. Me and kids sent one way and him the other. Already panicking. Got me and the kids through security and waited for him at the other end. And waited. And waited. And waited.

We trawled up and down the security gate searching for him, no sign. I burst into tears and looked a proper nobhead mid way to panic attack with a 10 year old trying to comfort me and the teenager going "don't worry m I'll go back through security and find him!!! No!!

10 minutes later DH emerges looking a little shamefaced. When he was asked if he had any electronics in his bag he said no because "he couldn't be arsed unpacking it all". He had a phone, iPad, batteries for my camera, speaker, go pro and a kindle.

Obviously they found electronics in his bag. So they spent ages unpacking everything and examining it all individually.

What. A. Nobhead.

@Sciurus83 i’m very much the same, fuming at people fannying about at security until.... we booked a holiday very last minute, Thursday night leaving Saturday at 6am. I was standing in the security queue when I suddenly realised that in my handbag I had a 500ml bottle of irn bru. I was so stressed running about I had put it there more as a place to just put it down. I had to drink the full lot in one go as there were no bins I could see. The bins were next to the actual conveyor belts. I luckily managed to neck it all before it was my turn.

This summer holiday. This will be long.
Everything appears to go smoothly during check-in etc, we're sitting in the plane waiting for take-off for our evening flight. Waiting... waiting... Starting to see ppl being disembarked from neighbouring planes... Informed there's bad weather over the Channel, but we're hoping to leave in half an hour. Then an hour. After two hours on the plane we're shepherded back to the departure lounge with another two hour wait ahead. Back on the plane, another hour until take-off, then finally we do leave... diverted to another city two hours from our destination. It's 1 am by this time.
We're still feeling comparatively lucky at this point because most other flights we saw were cancelled outright and ppl sent home in the middle of the night with instructions to "rebook via the website".
So, at least we'll get there, we think, and they're promising there'll be coaches to our actual destination.
So we land at 3 in the morning. Everyone gathers at the baggage carousel for some more waiting around until a smug ground staff person tells us, "no bags today", the bags will be going to our destination airport on the plane (?!). Oh, and no coaches, either. Train station is that way. Take it up with your airline.
That was it. We had to make our own way, wait another 2 hours for the first train and got to our destination at 8 am. With no luggage. At the airport they tell us, Oh, the luggage was taken off at the diversion airport, after all. It'll arrive sometime, maybe today. Given a case #, web address and a set of phone numbers that don't connect to anything.

Long story short, we were lucky again because we were staying quite close to the airport, so we were able to actually go back and ask again after 36 hours passed with no news on the luggage and no way to contact anyone by phone or online. Oh yes, the luggage is here, sitting over there until someone has time to log it. Feel free to pick out your bags.

Which we did, and finally got going to our next destination. The funny end to the story was, after 3 more days we started getting no-reply emails alerting us that they were "in the process of locating our luggage" (which was in our possession). We got one of those every day for 3 days, then after a week of silence the amazing message "we found your luggage! Please go to the lost luggage desk at the airport etc etc.."
I have no idea what they think they've found but we weren't going to cut short our seaside stay to find out

I've flown a few times internally in Russia on Aeroflot. Some made stuff has happened.
One time we all walked quite a long distance out to the plane to board and the stairs weren't there so we all just stood around on the runway. People were smoking, flicking fag ends onto the ground into puddles of aviation fuel.
When we got in to that flight one passenger had a small goat in a crate under the seat in front.
Another night flight was the worst I've every experienced. It was turbulent, there was a pool of vomit on the floor beside the toilet and loads of people were smoking in the loos including the guy sitting beside me.
Finally this isn't a mishap but I thought it was very inappropriate. One Aeroflot flight I was on showed the Sex and the city movie, and not a family friendly version on the TV screens overhead where everyone could see them.
Ah Russia, I love it really. I'll be back there next week.

We fly the same route very regularly so are pretty relaxed about it.
Dropped off bags, went for breakfast, bit of shopping, wandered to the gate, got out the passports and DD’s is missing. All passports were in a plastic wallet in my bag and had been since bag drop so I couldn’t see how I could lose one. Emptied whole bag while starting to panic, everyone else in the rapidly diminishing queue were trying to help, I was getting annoyed as DH kept saying “ you must have it” repeatedly.
Then a staff member came to see what the fuss was -“ is the name x?”
“Yes we have it here, the bag drop staff forgot to give it back”
Fair enough but we had been at the airport for 2 hours, would it have killed them to make an announcement ? What if I’d realised earlier? I wouldn’t have even gone to the gate!
I now count the passports every time I am handed them back.

I’m not sure I’d even register someone not making a sandwich for me five minutes later, let alone twenty years. 🤷‍♀️

Writing this sat at Heathrow after missing our original flight from Gatwick, had to buy new tickets costing nearly £2k and get the national Express. Flight is not for hours yet and kids are bored and moaning. A man sat next to me got up suddenly and rushed off, leaving an unopened Twix, which I ate gleefully. He then came back .

I would like to say I've learned my lesson but we did it before, 10 years ago. Gah!

I also was quizzed at Trieste airport once as my son has a different surname (actually double barrelled so it's partly the same), asking if I had his father's permission to take him out of the country etc. I was terrified they were going to take him off me!

@SimonJT brown girls get pulled over for randon security checks & additional screening (flight to the US) too.

My teen DS who's darker than me was questioned when travelling with his dad (my white DH). I really worry what it's be like when he's travelling alone.

Not an airport...but I once “bolted” from boarding a ferry in Europe.
Friend dropped me off for my weekend trip to visit another friend. Went to board, got my tickets out. They wouldn’t let me on, said the ticket was wrong and I had to buy one from the office. Cursing the local travel agent, with about 5 mins until departure...legged it down the pier to the thankfully empty office, who looked at the ticket and shrugged “it’s fine, did you show the return.” Raced back to the ferry, with my “out” and “return” tickets in each hand. Same guy shrugs and tells me to hurry up, I got on and the door closed behind me.
Finally calmed down after setting sail then got a text from friend saying she didn’t mind if I didn’t want to tell her what I was up to, but as she’d dropped me off at the port then seen me sprinting away from the ferry I was supposedly getting she was a bit worried and could I keep in touch just so she knows I’m safe!!!!

Plane had just landed at 2am and I started to feel unwell with stomach cramps. Waited until everyone disembarked and asked cabin crew if I could use the toilet, it was right at front of plane. I had the most explosive diarrhoea you can imagine, it was rank. Sitting there, pouring sweat, knickers at my ankles and the door opens, it was the pilot. I was mortified. He just politely said sorry ma'am.

Eventually managed to get off and had to toilet hop all the long walk to baggage claim, it was horrendous. We were staying at an airport hotel 2 minutes walk from the front door and I thought I'd make it, I didn't 😳. Finally got into hotel room, had a shower and fell into bed. At 3:30 the fire alarm went off and everyone was evacuated. We were on the top floor and had to sprint down the stairs. Got to the bottom and we were told sorry, false alarm. We'd had a wonderful holiday though 🤣

On a plane from Gatwick to Berlin, relatively short flight but I am a nervous flyer so always have one of those mini bottles of wine they sell on the plane just to take the edge off the nerves.

Got to cruising height, it was night time so I poured my wine into the plastic cup the stewardess gave me, put in my headphones and got my book out to read. Due to headphones, I didn't hear the 'seatbelt on' warning go off, nor did I hear the "we are possibly about to experience turbulence" from the pilots speaker. The first thing I knew about the turbulence was when the plane LEAPT about for what ended up being a terrifying 15 minutes, my cup of wine spilling gracefully onto the lap of the man in the suit sat next to me, who thankfully said he was on his way home and was very understanding.

I was in floods of tears, worst flight of my life.

Oh so many

Little ds on the bus from the car park revealing he has a toy gun in his pocket. Was so stressed - had to go to information and tell them first because I thought holding it as I approached might cause a panic ! They disposed of it.

Dh forgetting to take his laptop out his hand luggage, delay of ages in the queue to get it checked, flight almost missed and gates closing but he and dd were too cool to run. Almost killed him as they sauntered up.

Another ds having a meltdown and running round at the bottom of the aeroplane stairs because his brother went ahead of him. Couldn't catch him, everyone looking, me expecting to be chucked off the flight.

Sat next to some poor man with a skin condition that caused huge flakes to fall off but also he was picking at them and dropping them. My OCD went into overdrive and I had to ask to be moved.

DH and I paid for a once in a lifetime eye wateringly expensive holiday. Packed, turned up at the airport.... no passports.
They'd fallen out of my bag as I'd picked it up in the hallway at home.
We had to go home, and book a flight for the following day but missed two days of our holiday.

Also once on a plane in Egypt one of the engines caught fire. Small amounts of red and huge clouds of smoke. When I pointed it out in alarm to the cabin crew she just pulled the curtain thing down so I couldn't see it and marched off.

going on holiday with DH for a friend's wedding DH had packed his hand luggage last minute into an old backpack. We were going through security with a huge group of the groom's family, most who we hadn't met before or hardly knew.
DH got pulled by security for a bag check, swore blind he didn't have any liquids or Sharp weapons, was getting quite jumped up about it... until the guy searching his bag pulled out the biggest bottle of lubricant I have ever seen, followed by a Swiss army knife. DH had to go off and be interrogated while I stood shamefaced with the groom's family. It was a running joke of the holiday for a 2 full weeks and they still refer to my DH as 'X with the lube and the knife'.

I still haven't forgiven him.

My then baby daughter projectile vomited all over a beautifully turned out male couple in the airport lounge, shortly prior to us all boarding a long haul flight.

Just remember another one. We had been abroad staying with friends when our daughter was a baby. Three hour drive back to the airport. Daughter starts fussing in the car and I'm trying to comfort her whilst trying to balance a can of coke between my knees. Didn't work and the coke spilled everywhere and pooled where I was sitting. Arrived at Catania airport which literally had no facilities wearing a denim skirt with a massive brown stain on the bum. Husband had checked the luggage in while I was in loos trying to clean myself up so I had nothing to change into until we arrived at Manchester airport and retrieved our bags. On the outward journey daughter puked all over the hand luggage just before boarding.

Heading for a walking holiday in Orkney in March. Flying from an airport 2 hours from home, DP takes my suitcase from the car boot and belatedly realises that his is still in the hallway at home.

He had only the clothes he was wearing and no time to go back for it. I'm afraid I was laughing too hard to be properly sympathetic! Luckily Kirkwall has some shops, he'd have struggled if we'd been going back to Shetland!

On the brown beardy front - got randomly selected for special search in an US airport, I'm White, female, UK passport. Got taken to the random selection, deffo -no- racial- profiling area to find it was me and 8 brown skinned, men, ages ranging between 18-40 ish 'randomly' selected. all but one were actually American. One guy jokingly asked me what he hell I was doing there, and told me it was his 3rd 'random' selection in the 3rd city that month. He was American born and bred. I was clearly the control subject - i.e. the 'proof' that they weren't profiling as they'd pulled out this wee pasty faced mum for screening. On the plus side we actually whipped through immigration way quicker than normal...

Unless it's one of those funny airlines who will charge an arm and a leg to print boarding passes, losing them at airport is really no big deal, gate staff can just print a new one.

Was waiting for my last leg, a little 40 min hop after many many hours of travelling and being totally jetlagged. Was wondering that according to the app, we are now boarding, now last call - but nobody at the gate.
Yes, that happens if you look at the boarding pass upside down and sit at gate 9, not gate 6 that was in fact about to close..

The liquids - was flying just yesterday. Man in front of me is asked: liquids, gels? He says no. When they inevitably found something on the scanner and searched his bag, he seemed to be most surprised that his aftershave and face cream also counted as 'liquid or gel'.