If your answer is “never,” congrats, it will happen soon :-). My last time was about two weekends ago. I was trying to get on a Lufthansa (LH) flight on a Friday morning from Frankfurt, Germany (FRA) to Berlin, Germany (TXL). When I got to the gate and checked in, I noticed that I was #29 out of 31 on the list! At least I was not #31 huh? Well, as it turns out, only 12 of us made it. Not bad I thought, although I was not one of them.
Berlin Tower Berlin, Germany
My next option was another LH flight, but I figured I’d perhaps be the same place on the list. I had checked the schedules using passrider.com and realized that there is an Air Berlin (AB) flight about an hour and a half or so later. I changed terminals and thankfully, there were seats available and I made it.
So how has it been for you? How bad was the list the last time you got bumped? What were your alternate plans? We want to hear all about it.
Comments 7
I was returning from SYD when the flight took a three hour delay. By the time we reached LAX and got through customs as quickly as possible we had missed all but two flights to HNL. (home.) The previous flight had canceled, which meant that those two flights were overbooked. Fast thinking, we ran to the Maui flight which was wide open. Feeling a little smug while sitting in First Class, I paid the price when we arrived in Maui. It was a holiday, not a major holiday but a day where schools were not in session, banks were closed, and no mail delivery. I spent the night in Maui and next 10 hours standing by for a 30 minute flight. Could not even buy a ticket, everything was booked solid. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears.
Great story Sharon. Hindsight is always twenty/twenty huh? It’s always funky when you are in Maui and spend all day at the airport :-(.
Why didn’t you try for a direct flight from SYD-HNL??.There’s Qantas, Hawaiian Airlines for two. Although Jan. is the middle of summer, so maybe they were o/s?
I was returning from SYD when the flight took a three hour delay. By the time we reached LAX and got through customs as quickly as possible we had missed all but two flights to HNL. (home.) The previous flight had canceled, which meant that those two flights were overbooked. Fast thinking, we ran to the Maui flight which was wide open. Feeling a little smug while sitting in First Class, I paid the price when we arrived in Maui. It was a holiday, not a major holiday but a day where schools were not in session, banks were closed, and no mail delivery. I spent the night in Maui and next 10 hours standing by for a 30 minute flight. Could not even buy a ticket, everything was booked solid. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears.
Great story Sharon. Hindsight is always twenty/twenty huh? It’s always funky when you are in Maui and spend all day at the airport :-(.
Last Sun(Mar 06) I was booked from HKG to YYZ on Cathay Pacific departing at 10:40. About 20hrs prior to departure the system assigned me a seat (Retiree) and I had my boarding pass! I could not have been more pleased as these flights are often extremely busy. When I reached the gate boarding had commenced and several minutes later I hear the gate agent page my name! When I approached the gate agent I was told that I was being offloaded due to payload. One can imagine how I felt. Anyway, my backup was an AC flight leaving at 4:25pm and another CX flight leaving at 6:15pm. After having gone thru security and immigration and retrieving my bag I made my way to CX Staff Travel Counter to list for the later flight. However, I was a bit apprehensive that this flight might also have a payload problem and so wanted to try Air Canada. I waited until AC opened counters and approached a very rude check-in agent only to be told that ‘we are handling agents’ and that we need a listing and we cannot do that at the counter and neither will we accept you as norec. They refused to provide any local number to call. My issue was that AC ticket was issued on CX stock and not on myidtravel which lists automatically. I tried calling AC in North America on a free app I had on my ipad but could not hear the agent clearly and had to hang up. I then decided to go back to CX and was accepted for the later flight. Fortunately, I met up with an excolleague who had arrived from SIN and who had a hotel close to the airport where I was able to relax for a few hours and get something to eat. It is very often that we are faced with staff who refuse to assist which is why we need to have done our research and have all options open for that unforseen circumstance, in this case where the AC flight was wide open!