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Unless you count the time I found a woman giving birth in a bathroom stall in the Kuwait airport at 3:00 am when I was nine.
I had to wake up at 5:30 AM to make sure I got there in time with plenty to spare. Only there wasn't plenty to spare, because a car burst into flames.
Not mine. But it did cause a 6:00 AM traffic jam.
The second issue occurred at the airport where I discovered that my boarding pass was printed with Rachel Brown (name on credit card) instead of Manija Brown (name on passport and also name I booked my ticket for, which is provable because that's what Orbitz sent me in receipt, etc.)
They said 1) I cannot get on plane with that pass, 2) they cannot change the name on the pass, 3) I cannot cancel flight and rebook the same one in the correct name.
"But how did you get through security in Lexington?" she asked.
"Lexington?!" I said.
"I didn't come through Lexington," I said. "I just walked in now, from LA."
We argued about this for several minutes.
You are probably thinking I grabbed the wrong boarding pass, but it did say Rachel Brown and it's what the kiosk spit out when I inserted my credit card.
"And you're going to Detroit, right?"
"Detroit?!" I said. "No! I'm going to Minneapolis!"
At that point it became clear that something was disastrously wrong. She told me it wasn't her problem and to call Orbitz. I madly waved my email confirmation at her and pointed out that by now, I had only thirty minutes to boarding.
She then ran my passport through the system and produced the correct boarding pass in the correct name. I'm still not sure exactly what happened. The most plausible answer seems to be that when I inserted my credit card, it read only the name on the card, not the number, and gave me another Rachel Brown's boarding pass.
However. The flight itinerary for that Rachel Brown was to leave Lexington, Kentucky, fly to Los Angeles, and then go to Detroit all on the same day. If you look at a map of the US, you'll see why this is an unlikely itinerary to say the least.
Whatever happened, I was then rushed through security...
...until I got randomly selected to be searched.
When they were done searching me, they put my bag through the X-Ray, then decided to search my bag. I had a small case of DVDs for a TV show, and it got flagged as suspicious. The TSA guy demanded that I open the case and prove they were DVDs.
The case jammed. I struggled and struggled to open it and finally just handed it to him and asked him to try. Then he struggled and struggled and finally got it open.
It contained DVDs.
He then got suspicious of a bag of cocoa powder I use to disguise the taste of some gross powdered meds I take. It was in the original packaging, but it had come open so there was brown powder inside the ziplock bag I'd put it in.
"It's cocoa powder!" I said, on the verge of losing my mind. "I CAN PROVE IT! IF YOU WANT I WILL EAT SOME RIGHT NOW WHILE YOU WATCH!!!
He decided not to make me eat it.
I barely made it onto the plane, where none of crew and v few of passengers are masked.
But! I made it to Minneapolis, I met my friend, and we went to a cafe where I had pancakes, coffee, and a cocktail.
I had to wake up at 5:30 AM to make sure I got there in time with plenty to spare. Only there wasn't plenty to spare, because a car burst into flames.
Not mine. But it did cause a 6:00 AM traffic jam.
The second issue occurred at the airport where I discovered that my boarding pass was printed with Rachel Brown (name on credit card) instead of Manija Brown (name on passport and also name I booked my ticket for, which is provable because that's what Orbitz sent me in receipt, etc.)
They said 1) I cannot get on plane with that pass, 2) they cannot change the name on the pass, 3) I cannot cancel flight and rebook the same one in the correct name.
"But how did you get through security in Lexington?" she asked.
"Lexington?!" I said.
"I didn't come through Lexington," I said. "I just walked in now, from LA."
We argued about this for several minutes.
You are probably thinking I grabbed the wrong boarding pass, but it did say Rachel Brown and it's what the kiosk spit out when I inserted my credit card.
"And you're going to Detroit, right?"
"Detroit?!" I said. "No! I'm going to Minneapolis!"
At that point it became clear that something was disastrously wrong. She told me it wasn't her problem and to call Orbitz. I madly waved my email confirmation at her and pointed out that by now, I had only thirty minutes to boarding.
She then ran my passport through the system and produced the correct boarding pass in the correct name. I'm still not sure exactly what happened. The most plausible answer seems to be that when I inserted my credit card, it read only the name on the card, not the number, and gave me another Rachel Brown's boarding pass.
However. The flight itinerary for that Rachel Brown was to leave Lexington, Kentucky, fly to Los Angeles, and then go to Detroit all on the same day. If you look at a map of the US, you'll see why this is an unlikely itinerary to say the least.
Whatever happened, I was then rushed through security...
...until I got randomly selected to be searched.
When they were done searching me, they put my bag through the X-Ray, then decided to search my bag. I had a small case of DVDs for a TV show, and it got flagged as suspicious. The TSA guy demanded that I open the case and prove they were DVDs.
The case jammed. I struggled and struggled to open it and finally just handed it to him and asked him to try. Then he struggled and struggled and finally got it open.
It contained DVDs.
He then got suspicious of a bag of cocoa powder I use to disguise the taste of some gross powdered meds I take. It was in the original packaging, but it had come open so there was brown powder inside the ziplock bag I'd put it in.
"It's cocoa powder!" I said, on the verge of losing my mind. "I CAN PROVE IT! IF YOU WANT I WILL EAT SOME RIGHT NOW WHILE YOU WATCH!!!
He decided not to make me eat it.
I barely made it onto the plane, where none of crew and v few of passengers are masked.
But! I made it to Minneapolis, I met my friend, and we went to a cafe where I had pancakes, coffee, and a cocktail.