Just wondering if anyone as had any bad experiences with flying, or at the airport. Here are mine:

Once we where waiting to check in at liverpool airport to fly back to Switzerland, and they had a bomb scare so everyone had to go outside, and wait on the carpark while the bomb squad arrived to check it before we could go back inside.

I was at the gates ready to board the plane (in Switzerland going to the UK) when suddenly my name was called so i went to the desk, and they said sorry we have over booked the plane you have to go with this man a plane will take you to france, then in France i had to change planes, and catch another plane, then because i would be ver late home i had to get a taxi instead of my dad picking me up which cost me a fortune.

Going on our honeymoon to the Maldives we where at the emergancy exit door so everytime the plane had to land (3 times once to take food on board, then t landed for petrol, then for people to get off, and more people to get on) it was a 14hour plane journey in the night so we where tired, but the stewardess needed to sit at the emergency door so she would wake us up, and make my husband go, and sit in the kitchen for take offs, and landings. On the way back from the Maldives we could not sit together my husband was 2 rows back.

We where once flying from Manchester to Zurich after about 20 minutes in the air, the captain announced we had to turn around, and fly back to Manchester, When we got near the landing strip all these fire engines where waiting, yes the plane was on fire.

Anybody else got any stories i would love to hear them, or is it just me with all the bad luck.

Ref: flight in June 1998

Dear Sir,

As one of many customers impacted last Sunday at Gatwick by the delay of flight and it‘s subsequent handling, I would like to say how exrtemely concerned I am for the treatment of the passengers and the attitude of the staff involved.

It seems ludicrous to me that a company as large and established as British Airways can allow over 100 customers to wait in a small lounge for almost three hours without reasonable facilities (one abysmal coffee machine and no toilets is really not good enough). In addition to this, allowing smoking in such a small area, continuing to use the lounge for other flights at an adjoining gate and firing the aircraft engines for almost an hour right next to the building contributing to a less-than ideal holding environment for these customers, some of whom were infants and elderly people.

The refreshments provided were pathetic. Just how 100 customers can share three litres of orange juice is beyond me. The biscuits and cakes also did not last long enough for all to get their share. I was pleased to note that the ground staff seemed to blame me when I asked if there was more orange juice judging by their sullen attitude. I did ask politely so I know I did not provoke being answered in such a tone.

The vending machine was switched to free-vend about one hour later than promised. This was not worth the wait. I was grateful that I did not pay 50p for the drink I took, Pepsi Max said the label on the machine, it should be changed to "coloured sparkling water".

Eventually, a full two hours after our scheduled take-off time, it was announced that the aircraft could not be repaired and we would be taking another aircraft to make the flight. Why do you work on a machine for two hours before deciding this? That was two hours of my leisure time, thank you very much. By my calculations, we would have landed in Zürich and I would be on my way home and looking forwards to eating a nice meal. But we will come to that in a moment.

So it was to be, a half-hour later, that we are herded onto a bus to go to the other gate. Gate 10 is a nice, long walk down the terminal so this was a good idea. I was lucky to travel on the second bus, subjected to stand for another 5 minutes whilst the driver stood outside. Then, once he got in, he tested his engine for two minutes on full throttle before taking us to the next aircraft.

Imagine the joy next when we look at the aircraft and see the steps going to the rear exit. We thought we were nearly onboard - but no. We were made to walk up two flights of steps (the people with pushchairs were pleased with that idea) and then had to make a big loop round into the forward exit, making the journey from gate 10 to gate 3 only marginally shorter to go with the bus rather than on foot. But at least at this point we were on the aircraft.

The cabin crew ranged from seeing the bright side to being just as unhappy as some of the passengers. Perhaps you can remind them that they do get paid for what they do? If they had to wait, I am sure they had better facilities than the paying customers on the flight!! There are always job openings at MacDonalds for people with attitudes like that.

Once airborne, I was really looking forwards to something nice to eat. I thought that since we were so delayed and could not make use of the excellent restaurants at Gatwick that some special, nice meal would be presented to us. Tragically, I was wrong. I could not tell you what it was, but it was not tasty and it was not filling.

The final gripe is that we were promised that we would be met by ground staff in Zürich. This was not actually the case. Since there was no possibility of onward public transport, we needed a taxi and we needed British Airways to pay for it. After several minutes, we went to an Information Desk and found that they could help us. Cue another delay of a half-hour whilst the paperwork was done and the taxis called. In my mind, it would have been sensible to use the time at Gatwick to process this paperwork beforehand since it was almost midnight and everyone just wanted to be at home.

Below I list what happened and approximately when. Think if you would enjoy what we endured. The times are as best I can remember.

1700 Check in
1730 – 1800 Enter Departure area
1810 Red Warning of "Flight Closing" on information screens
1840 Announcement telling of technical problem and perhaps 10 minute delay
1910 Testing stops
1920 Testing starts again
1930 Minimal refreshments provided
1940 Minimal refreshments gone
2000 Happy staff member tells me that there is "no more orange juice". Drinks machine eventually goes onto free vend
2040 Announcement about other aircraft
2105 Other aircraft due to land
2020 Loaded onto buses
2130 In aircraft
(Switch to CET)
2330 Land
2340 Find Information Desk which can actually help
2355 Forms finally filled in triplicate, taxi ordered
0020 Taxi arrives
0050 Home, finally

You now have at least a dozen people who would avoid flying British Airways in the future. I can tell you also that many others were very unhappy at the treatment in this situation. It is in your hands as to what you will do, if anything, to rectify this situation. The twelve people I knew on this flight were all expatriates who fly regularly between Switzerland and the UK, twelve people who all know other expatriates who fly to and from the UK and twelve people who are likely to be asked about their journeys with airlines by possible new customers and say of their dissatisfaction with British Airways given this incident.

I look forwards to your replies as do the people listed in this letter of complaint.

Yours faithfully,
Mr Angry

Have a few stories of getting stuck at airports in all sorts of unlikely cities (travelled a lot for work) but most spectacular was flying from Sydney to Coolangatta, the plane was hit by lightning. After an almighty loud bang and the whole plane shuddering....everything was fine again. My knuckles were white for a week though...

Barbra.

Lob, there are several things wrong with your letter:

1) It is rambling
2) It is infused with sarcasm
3) It contains laced threats

Now as a poor sap that once had to spend his summer answering customer complaints I can tell you that letter would go straight in the bin. I'm too harassed and demotivated to be deciphering convoluted letters of complaint. Give me facts, makes them concise and tell me what it is you expect of AcmeAir.

Capeesh?

Well, there was the time I had to camp out at LHR during the Air Traffic Controllers' strike in the US in 1981 because most of the flights to the US were cancelled. It took me three days to get home (JFK)

On another occasion, there was a hydraulic failure the captain discovered shortly after take-off, so we had to turn back. It was a pretty bumpy ride, with the aircraft pitching and yawing, and no one was even sure if the landing gear were down properly. So we had to prepare the cabin for a crash landing. We had quite a rough, hard landing, with the fire/emergency brigades standing by, but, thankfully, no one was hurt.

Then there was another occasion where lightning struck the aircraft and broke the top layer of the cockpit window on the captain's side. Luckily, it was a short-haul flight (<2 hours). When we landed, the maintenance crew sheared off the cracked layer, and reinforced the remaining layer(s) as best as they could with some kind of duct tape (!!!) and we continued on the next and final leg of our journey. Needless to say, everyone was worried that that window would blow and we'd have a decompression, but thankfully, again, nothing happened.

I could add a few stories about rude, crazy passengers, but I'll spare you

The quietest flight I was on, ever, was from Cancun to Mexico City. No talking, no service, nothing.

Why?

Because we had no option other than to go directly through the thunderstorm in the way.

I have to say that the sparkles on the wings made me laugh. It was electric in there

No no do not spare me tell me

Okay, okay. I will, but it'll have to wait until after dinner

Lob, did you get a response to your letter or was this just a recent thing???

Takling about the BA flight...

Some years ago while flying on a Crossair Jumbolino we did a (hard) touch-n-go at London City Airport. After getting back into the air and circling around to make another attempt the Captain explained to us that we were blown off course while making the landing and he was forced to abort. I never had such sweaty palms as I did during the second (and successful) attempt at landing. Here's a YouTube of the same airport and the same type of plane from Swiss Airways. I think this is a common occurrence there as I've landed at least a half dozen times or more and while waiting to return to Zurich I watched many a plane bounce it's way past the terminal during its landing.

actually that is nearly 10 years old. I actually gave up the will to live - and did not send it.

But they did splurge for a taxi for 12 people.

I've also had a heated discussion in a hotel in Colombo about the food I ate as Air Lanka had managed to give me an unexpected layover there. Air Lanka then, later that day, put me up in a hotel in Malé and said "drinks are on us". Malé, being a Muslim island (Maldives), is teetotal.

Thanks, Air Lanka!!

That must have been fun...

I managed to miss a flight from Venice to Bristol by three minutes. My partner at the time wasn't very impressed as we missed the flight because I thought it would be a good idea to quickly step off the Vaporetto and buy my friend a nice red tie with a naked lady on the back. It was a very cool tie that I suspect he never wore. I had to buy two more tickets and a night in a hotel costing more than 300 pounds.

3 aborted landings at London City airport, the first 2 were simply because the previous plane hadn't got off the runway quickly enough and were nothing special

The third was scary, sometime in 2002(?), gale force winds in England, no planes had landed at LCY all day and we were the first, I've never had a bumpy ride like it (out of 400+ flights). It seemed to be moving sideways. I remember turning to the woman next to me and saying 'we're not going to land here tonight'

Well the plane got closer, past the QE bridge, over Woolwich prison, then over some water, then I'd guess it was 50m or less off the ground when, on went the engine, and on we went to Stansted

To cap it all off, the taxi driver from Stansted to London insisted on using his new GPS, which went for the shortest route not fastest and I got home around last orders.

Okay, sorry for the delay. I'll be brief and try to keep this PG-rated

There was the guy who grabbed my breast, and gave it a squeeze and got a tray thrown in his face (it was an entrée that had tomato sauce, and he was wearing a white suit, too). Then he got down on his hands and knees and begged me not to have him arrested because he didn’t want his wife and kids to find out.

There was another guy (who happened to be a member of one of the Arab royal families) who grabbed my buttocks and promptly got a slap in the face. He threatened to have me fired, I told him I’d go to the press.

There was yet another guy who repeatedly called me *bitch* who got a tray of drinks dumped in his lap (accidentally, of course)

I caught people having sex in the lavs, under blankets and in the upper deck lounge of the 747.

I had passengers who brought live chickens, falcons and even snakes on board the aircraft. One young girl even smuggled a kitten on board under her coat.

One of my favorites was an obnoxious woman who’d been upgraded to First Class and complained about everything – the service, the drinks, the food – nonstop. When she was eating her meal (which was a chicken entrée), she turned to my partner and myself and said in broken English “this chicken bad.” My partner, by this time fed up to the back teeth with her, picked up the leg of chicken (with gravy splattering everywhere) and proceeded to *spank* it with her two forefingers, saying “bad chicken, bad, chicken, bad chicken.” I did everything I could to stop myself from laughing, but it was no use.

Then there was the poor soul who spilled tomato juice all over his trousers and asked us to help him clean up. One of the stewards helped him wash his trousers. Then to dry the trousers, he put them in one of the galley ovens and ended up burning them. Poor guy had to disembark with a blanket wrapped around himself

I am getting addicted to this thread and keep reading it

I HATE flying and am always terrified and have been known to grab whoever is next to me

I am flying next week back to Geneva from London City. Ahhhhh

I don't know why I opened this thread.

I'm flying tomorrow, and am not really looking forward to it at all.

Maybe I should turn the computer off, go and pack, and forget all these horror stories...?

(But they're so entertaining!)

So you going to let us in on how one gets a tomato stain out of a white suit..?

This'll get deleted overnight as its off-topic (or whatever you call it).
I have tears rolling down my cheeks.
My life BEF was never like this.
BEF is a new abbreviation like BC and AD which will get me into trouble with the "English language no abbreviations allowed" purists.
It simply means Before English Forum.

No passport story but flight. It happens 2 years ago when I regularly visit partner here in Switzlerland from London. There was one trip to return back to London from Basel Airport, I confidently went to check-in counter. She couldnt find my name. Confidently I asked her to check again, its probably because of my difficult name that they cannot find it, which happens most of the time. Later she found out that my ticket was for the day before! How embarrassing .

Well of course I had to buy an instant ticket to London City to fly back.
I used to laugh at my friends who missed their flight minutes after the departure.. but I did miss my flight and realise it one day after!