Went to the airport, had a horrible time talking to the customer agent that basically told me he can’t do anything for me, I have to start from the scratch, told me to go to the competition and basically … you know. Didn’t even offer to listen to what I had to say. Aer Lingus wonderful customer service, avoid it at all costs. I bought a new tickets with EasyJet. Not too expensive, but that will be a night on Belfast airport in 2 days before I finally get to Krakow…

That is a lesson right here: set 2 or 3 alarms.. don’t just rely on one.

One was with Ryanair (mistake #1) while I was in college studying in London for a semester. I had booked a cheap ticket on Ryanair to fly to Belgium from Spain (stop #1 on the trip) to visit some friends. As I had been traveling in Spain for 2 days, I stupidly didn’t realize there was a 1 hour time difference between Spain and London. Totally my fault — I did ask someone in my defense if there was one, and they said no, but still I should have triple checked. I had spent 2 days on my own without a real schedule, so I just didn’t notice. Cue to me having TIME TO KILL (oh the irony) before the flight and talking to the person picking me up in Belgium who asked if I was at the airport already and clued me in on the time difference when I said “No not yet!”

Cue to me paying an absurd amount of money to get a taxi driver to get me to the airport — I had a bus ticket but didn’t want to risk it with the local stops it was making and the fact it left 30 mins after. I get to the airport with about 45ish mins before departure — incredibly close but doable if it was a Delta counter. The airport was TINY — one of those little ones only airlines like Ryanair fly to — it had about 6 gates and I could see my gate from the ticket counter. No security line. Plane hadn’t even started boarded or arrived yet.

Except Ryanair dedicates ticket counters by FLIGHT. You can’t just walk up to any ol counter and ask to be checked in. They close the checkin lanes an hour before takeoff, so no one would check me in. I went to about 5-8 different people asking– begging — for someone to please check me in. All refused and being sent to a different person. Meanwhile time ticks down — boarding stars and I even ironically hear my name being called. I go to the security counter asking if I can speak to the gate agent who paged me — nothing. I am frantic at this point as I’m in the airport watching my flight disappear.

I end up missing the flight, out the money, and having to spend $500 on British Airways — at a different airport an hour away — to get my to Belgium. Fun times.

I immediately checked online for what to do. Then checked the Continental website and started to proceed to “change” my tickets to see a $75 charge per leg of the flight (2 legs to Austin). I figured, well they can make that change when I get there too, but I’ll have better options dealing with a person that a website.

The next flight was at 10:30am, I got to the airport for 8:30am and pleaded my case….Not the one about the alarm clock, but the one about my tire blowing out and having to call a friend for a ride and that I just missed it.

The gentleman behind the Continental counter said four words “You missed your flight”, as a statement not a question. I agreed, and he proceeded to type away, looked around as if he couldn’t do anything and found the last remaining seat on the 10:30 flight. Best part, he never asked for any payment information, handed me my two tickets (one was the layover) and said “have a nice day”. I was relieved at that point.

To make it worst, the flight from London arrived 20 minutes late into Milan (I was supposed to have 50 minutes transit, but because of this only had 30 minutes – gates close 10 minutes before departure so really I only had 20 minutes.)

But because I was following British Summer time, I thought I was 1.5 hours early. Spent sometime in the duty free testing perfumes.

Got to the gate, thought it was a bit odd that no one was queuing but I saw by the window there was a plane. Then I asked a staff who was watching the plane by the window – Is this for Prague? And she said – Yes. I went: Is it not open yet? She just stared at me, it’s closed, finished boarding. You are MR XXXXX. That moment I knew I have officially screwed myself.

(I was with a friend). Whole holiday costed us about £1000!

So went to collect our bags (took 40 minutes!). Then headed off to the Lufthansa office, not helpful at all. I was on one of those non-refundable tickets. But what’s worst is that they can’t even put me on another flight (I was willing to pay a fee etc). The woman said, even if we put you on another flight your return tickets are now cancelled, you can try to reinstate them in Prague for a fee but I cannot guarantee this.

Well, HOW THE HELL would she expect me to fly to Prague with uncertainty of my return tickets’ validity. So my friend and I just sat down, took my laptop out searched for options, flights available if we were to risk it and take another flight to Prague would cost us 500 euros! (ONE WAY), and this is without any guarantee we can use our return tickets booked on the original trip! Even if we can, probably have to pay for fees. Worst off if we can’t then gota buy a whole new ONE WAY Prague-London., which probably would cost us another 500-700 euros!.

So we ended up just buying tickets back to London – on KLM via Amsterdam, costed us additional £365. We thought this would be a cheaper and safer option than if we continued to Prague.

To add cherry on the icing, we changed our Czech currency (value equivalent to £600) at Milan airport into some Euros and back into Sterling. Guess how much we got back in the end? £365 and 30 Euros. We lost about £200, and it was in small print this was a ‘transaction charge’. So sly of the forex counter as they advertised 0% commission but really they charged transaction fee instead, and it was really on a small print. They make you sign a form as well – I only realised I got ‘scammed’ about 20 minutes after when I said ‘wait a minute the value of my Czech currency was about £600! how on earth did I get back only this much!’ So the money we got back £365 – covered for our flights back to London on KLM, and 30 euros we used to eat lunch.

All in all, LOST our whole holidays altogether about £1600 for the both of us, didn’t incur anything extra as should we have gone for the holidays we would have spent that much anyway all in, but I’m gutted as that money was used on literally NOTHING (besides flying to Milan and Amsterdam!)

Now we’re both broke in London, this holiday was planned 6 months ago. Meant so much to us, been looking forward to it almost everyday but we think that jinxed it or maybe it was for the good, who knows we would have got run over or something should we have gone to Prague.

Oh well. Whatever the reason, we’ve learnt the lesson of our lives. ESPECIALLY when you travel between timezones with an hour or two difference be extracareful (esp when you’re travelling in the direction of ‘losing time’). The small difference of an hour or two sometimes can make it look ‘real’ that you don’t think anything is wrong.

We have just got to save up again and probably go on another holiday in 4-6 months time. Probably not Prague in the next few years(definitely one day), got to get the trauma out of our heads first, maybe Barcelona.

I don’t usually write comments but after reading all of the comments above, I felt a bit better as crap like this do happen.

*We’re trying to claim insurance – most often insurance don’t really cover these but we’re just trying our luck as the first segment did indeed cause a delay, we would have 45 minutes if not, but since the flight was delayed by 20 mins this cut our time calling it a close anyway even if we did realise about time difference. Expedia(we booked it thru them) is trying to help us claim back taxes paid on the unused portions of our tickets (as only the tickets are not refundable, taxes are) – this amount to some £150. Our hotel nada, all gone, non refundable for no show regardless circumstances.

Oh well. Thanks to all of you who wrote your experiences.

I had gotten busy and did not check-in like I normally would have, I got to the ticket counter and could not seem to get myself checked in! With some help from an
Air-tran ticket agent it was brought to my attention that I was 24 hours late; I was suppose to have traveled the previous day! Upon finding this out I am sure there must have been tears in my eyes as I was looking forward to spending Christmas with my 3 children; two of which I had not seen in about 3 years. I explained nothing as I watched the agent work after asking her “WHAT NOW?

In a few short minutes I had a stand by ticket in my hand and was on the way to the gate where I should have been the previous day without a charge of any kind!
I tend to think because I do deal with Air-Tran when I travel that this made the difference but then again; who knows!!! I will tell you that I thanked My Heavenly Father for taking such good care for me and asked My Heavely Father that he take care of my ticket agent as well as he had me!

Arrived an hour early to my domestic BWI (Baltimore) to JFK (Atlanta) flight – which is unheard of. The weather delayed my flight by about 45 extra minutes. I figured it was time to drink a beer with a few friends from the same music concert we all went to, and while they were leaving to make sure to catch their 6 pm flights, I was sure that I wouldn’t miss my boarding time at 5:45 pm. I just sat there and didn’t hear my name being called (if it was called), walked back to the boarding area, finally found a wall plug to charge my iPhone and listen to music, and half an hour later, it dawned on me that it’s 6:15 pm and the flight is about to leave!

It escaped me that the Boarding time is not the same as the Flight time – I didn’t hear or pay attention to anything around me. Then in a leisurely manner I asked the boarding lady, “Is this where I board? am I early?” and she says, “you are 6 minutes past the last boarding call – we even called your name!”

I could barely hold back tears, but had to save face. I tried to get on the plane, but couldn’t. It was pushing night time and I had to work the next morning at 5 am. She said, “I can book you on the next flight at no charge” – Done. An hour later, I made sure to be one of the first to board, and although I arrived too late to catch the Metro home, I did get a ride home just fine.

So, I flew Delta, didn’t pay a fee for not paying attention to time, sounds, and the boarding area. I blame it on the mere fact that my boarding area was missing an outlet plug that actually worked.. ;P