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What are your memorable airport stories?
Moments in your travels that took place during layovers, while waiting for your flights, checking in your baggage, etc.
The stories can be funny, sad, unexpected, interesting, etc.
Tell us what happened and what made it so memorable.
I don’t normally immediately answer my own question, but this one has stuck with me for years.
If you’ve never had the privilege of having Nanaimo bars, then you should absolutely seek them/a recipe out. My mom makes some absolutely amazing ones. They’re a coconut-custard-chocolate DREAM.
I had visited her, and she’d made me a whole batch to take back home with me, which I’d put in my carryon.
I’m in the security line, and my bag gets flagged for additional screening (possibly on account of the absurdly large number of Nanaimo bars I was carrying).
There was a woman directly in front of me, flying by herself with two kids, one who was probably 3 and the other who was definitely less than a year old.
Her baby bag also got flagged for screening as well. So I’m standing next to her in line, waiting for my bag, but the TSA agent has to get through hers first. This required a lot, because she had to pull a variety of items out and test the water and formula and whatnot, which took a while.
All while this is going on, the kids are squirming impatiently and I’m watching this poor woman trying her best to comfort them, all by herself, on what was going to be an undoubtedly very long and trying day for all of them.
The TSA agent was going as fast as she could, sensing the palpable discomfort of the situation but also obligated to swab and check all the different baby items as her job demanded.
She finally finished up after what feels like an eternity, hands the woman her baby bag, then picks up mine.
She opens my bag and is greeted with a gallon plastic bag full of homemade chocolate treats.
She doesn’t swab anything or check anything further. She just hands the bag to me, says “good job, pops,” and winks at me.
It became clear to me that she assumed that the woman and I were together, and that I was carrying a gratuitous amount of emotional support chocolate for my harried wife.
This, of course, was absolutely NOT the case. That poor woman was all on her own and I’d earmarked the bars for myself and my husband.
The density of Nanaimo bars, arranged in neat little rectangular rows, can be mistaken for plastic explosives. Being thought of as a family probably worked to your advantage :)
I don't fly very often, so every little thing feels like a big deal to me because it's all still very novel. But last year I flew home from DFW to IAD and our flight's landing was delayed. Then we landed and our gate was delayed. So we sat there and waited and waited. I think we spent an extra 2 hours on the plane in total? People were agitated, tired (it was after midnight), and just ready to not be in a plane.
None of this is particularly rare in air travel, but the way I departed the plane was. And anyone who flew in/out of IAD probably knows where this is going.
They never got the damn gate sorted so they had to "rescue" us off the plane via one of IAD's mobile lounges. Which are unique to only a few airports worldwide, but I very much associate them with IAD because you can always seem out and about, ferrying people between terminals. And they used to be used to take people to/from their planes directly. Well used to and still do in a pinch, apparently.
It was so late and I was exhausted...just physically and mentally exhausted from the day's travels and to my tired nerdy eyes I felt like I was boarding an AT-AT from Star Wars and that just made it all worth it for some reason? The interior of the thing isn't anything special. It's like a big bus on scissor lifts with more standing room. But it so cool because I'd never experienced it before. And they dropped us off right by the exit and I was finally freee....
to take the wrong parking lot shuttle, wander the wrong parking lot, have to ride the wrong bus back to the airport, then board the right bus back to my parking lot, then drive nearly 2 hours home, not getting back until like 4am. But still I got to ride an AT-AT!
The engineers who designed it probably had AT-ATs I mind :)
Don't fly out of Dulles, but I do semi-frequent Montreal and keep hoping to be in one.... Hopefully this year :)
I've heard rumblings that they're going to be phased out at Dulles soon, so hopefully Montreal doesn't do the same and you get to ride the AT-AT. Just don't forget to target the shield generator so Lord Vader can start his landing.
Tokyo Narita 2016 :
they had a cultural experience booth where some ladies will dress you up with traditional kimono with ALL the layers and ALL the accessories. All of them. I was crazy surprised by how many layers there are. I had a great time being prettied up. But the ladies had an even better time dressing up my then very young daughter. I thought she was already massively adorable by the second and third layer but it just kept going. Matching socks, sandles, purse, umbrella etc just extra icing on the experience mochi cake.
Amsterdam Schiphol, mid 2000s :
a short Ryanair layover turned into three day visit due to volcanic eruption (or was it ice storm?) . Because we were stranded, we had to line up for every single flight going to our destination on stand by, which sucked. By the third line I said to the counter staff, hey rather than us badgering like this, can you just schedule us for a sure ticket whenever that might be? The two staff looked at each other, shrugged and said sure that makes more sense, and booked us two days later. Our hotels and breakfasts were paid for in the meantime. My travel companion insisted we stay close to the airport, so we did not go to the Miffy Dick Bruna house (now Miffy museum) in Utrecht, sadly. The Rijksmuseum airport was a delightful find with rotation of masterpieces from the much bigger one in town, by the way, definitely worth the visit. This is also where I discovered stroopwafels.
Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport, circa mid 90s :
childhood memories of sharp banks into what looks to be way too close to apartment buildings before landing. Check out this cool photo from CNN
Wikipedia addendum
The Kai Tak checkerboard approach is so iconic, that's awesome that you got to fly on it. This cockpit video of a 747-200 flying it in rain is crazy to watch.
:D 💕 what a great video. Apparently there's fan made aviation sim levels of the approach and they're considered very difficult. That rain in the video....phew! I've refused to drive at 0ft altitude at only 100Km/hr.
I think I have two.
The first happened at Tokyo Haneda a few years ago. I had a work trip in Fukuoka, and my office is in Austin, so a bunch of us had to fly AUS->DFW->HND->FUK. Our DFW->HND flight ended up being nearly an hour late because of extremely strong (~110kt) headwinds over the Pacific and our layover there was fairly short. We made it through customs relatively fast-ish, but then we had to pick up our bags and re-check them on the other side. They have a little desk specifically for that, but when the agents saw our (mine and my girlfriend's) tickets and such a short layover, she hurriedly gave us tickets to the monorail to get to the other terminal saying it was faster than the free bus. We were exhausted, jet lagged, and had never been to Japan before, so we were super out of our element, but we managed to find the monorail, use our tickets, get back through security at the other terminal, and then make it to our flight in time. Turns out, the bus would've been fine, that's what all my coworkers took, but it's just something I remember.
The other story happened at Winnipeg when I was 13 or so (~2012). We were flying back from visiting family and had to go YWG->MSP->DFW because there are (obviously) no direct flights between Winnipeg and DFW. Our flight was scheduled for something like 7:30 am. We boarded the plane on time... but after about 15 minutes they told us there was an issue with the plane and we'd all have to deplane and wait for it to be fixed. Around an hour later, they'd fixed it, but the crosswind had picked up too much for our tiny CRJ or E175 or whatever to take off, so we had to sit... and wait... and wait... and wait... and wait...
I don't think a single flight left from the post-US-pre-clearance section of the airport for the entire rest of the day. Eventually, around 7 pm, after sitting in the airport for the past 12 hours, they finally rescheduled our flight for the next morning at 6. That one ended up leaving on time, but because of pre-departure customs, we had to go back through Canadian customs when we left the airport for the night, and then back through American customs again in the morning... and then had a 7 hour layover at MSP.
On top of all that, the American section of YWG is like 4 gates with a tiny duty-free shop, a Tim Horton's, and a TGI Friday's, so we didn't even really have anything fun to do the whole day while we waited.