When you miss your flight…

Have you ever missed a flight?  Not because of a delayed flight connection but just because … maybe you got the time wrong, maybe you were in a traffic jam, maybe you had to backtrack home for your passport.   There are a million different reasons you could get to the gate late for your flight but once you get there and the gate is closed, that is it buddy.  You are sunk!

Now there are tons of articles online you can read about the why’s and wherefore’s of being denied boarding because you are too late.  The European Union has very strict rules and work hard to protect the consumer.  BUT … how many times have you sat on a plane while waiting for someone to board whose luggage is already on the flight?  Frustrating isn’t it?

Now if they didn’t have checked luggage the flight could just go without them – and tough.  But because they have checked luggage it means that the luggage has to be offloaded while everyone else who was there on time has to sit and worry about their connecting flight

Of course we know that life happens.  People I booked flying into Gatwick had to take the bus to Heathrow.  I left them lots of time to make the connection – in fact I even thought maybe a bit too long of a connection.  But there was a traffic accident on the highway and of course everything was backed up to Kingdom Come.  They missed their flight but they did have travel insurance (smart people)!  So their additional costs were covered.

Today with more intense security checks at airports it is essential to plan ahead and give yourself hours … and hours …. to make sure you get to the gate in time.  In fact it has become so much of a pain that if I travel within Europe I prefer to go by train – it works out to the same by the time you factor in travelling to the airport, going through security and then having to travel from some outlying airport to the centre of town.

Unfortunately we can’t always do that – so you pack your ipad or your novel, get there early and hunker down.

Unlike Patrick Kehoe who was told the gate was closed for his flight from Dublin to Amsterdam.  No way Jose!  He was going to get on that flight no matter what.  He barged through the doors and ran out onto the tarmac waving at the slowly taxi-ing plane.  Of course the pilot didn’t stop to pick him up.  But airport security did.

He was really fed up.  Shame, he is only 23 and I guess he had a way to drive to get to his flight as it seems he comes from a little village south of Dublin called Raheenaskeagh, Gorey in County Wexford.  Now you try saying that!  I checked on the map and it is about one and a half hours from Dublin airport and I do think that the flight from Dublin to Amsterdam was an early morning flight.  So .. a certain amount of sympathy for Patrick (good Irish name).  He got really mad though when being questioned by reporters and finally lost it in this enduring image which I am sure he will want erased from the internet at some stage in the future.

There’s an old Irish saying that my mom taught me – póg mo thóin …. you look it up!