Hey Pandas, What Are Some Of Your Most Interesting Airport Stories? (Closed)

My dad and I almost missed a flight from Newark to New Delhi. Our flight from Atlanta to Newark had been significantly delayed and as soon as we landed the lady sitting next to me stood up and yelled "Everybody move! These people have to get to India!!" We got off the plane in record time and it was the whole 9 yards: 2 asthmatics sprinting across the airport while they called our names over the loud speaker, arrived wheezing right before they closed the gate, they pulled 2 standby passengers off the plane to put us on, and we took off basically as soon as we sat down. And guess what? When we got to India, lo and behold, our checked baggage was spinning around the carousel waiting for us. Airport miracle!

This happened before my flight at the airport in Rome one early morning. The designated smoking area was basically a large glass box between several of the terminals, I’m not sure it’s even there still. Being it was very early, I decided to have a smoke & was the only one inside this glass ‘room’. Unfortunately the sliding entry/exit doors jammed & I was literally trapped inside. As I tried to unjam the doors, which I wasn’t able to do, the airport itself became more populated. And instead of helping me out, literally, from this entrapment, people just started taking pictures of me in my big glass box as if I was some zoo animal in a cage! Even now, every once in a while I’ll happen across a posted pic online of me trapped in the box. I quit smoking soon after that.

When my autistic son was about 9 and before airport security was so tight, we escorted my husband to a gate to catch a flight to Japan for his Student Exchange program. We stayed around to watch the planes take off and my son thought they were awesome!

After 9/11 happened, you could not go past security check unless you have a ticket. My son wanted to go see the planes take off again, but sadly, we couldn't take him where he wanted to go.

Fast forward 7 years and my husband and I come home one day to find my sons backpack in the living room, but no sign of our son. We started looking everywhere but couldn't find him. We called the police...they started searching. Then one police officer says "Is he a big kid with a red jacket on?" YES!!

Turns out the officer saw him walking down a long road that lead to the local airport. A few seconds later and I'm getting a call from an office at the airport saying "Yeah...we have your son here and he wants to know if you can come pick him up."

I rush to the airport and there is my son, looking angry and upset. I asked what was wrong. He said "Mom! That airport is a rip off!" Turns out he wanted to see the big planes take off and was disappointed in the array of small single engine planes they had to offer. I had to break it to him that the big 747s are a little too big for that tiny airport.

Omg I have been waiting to share this. I recently moved to the us from france during covid. It was an absolute nightmare. I had a date set, my stuff was packed, and I was living out of my suitcases. On the way to the airport, I got a message. Due to covid my flight had been canceled. The airline refused to pay for another flight. I couldn’t get another flight for two weeks. Finally I was a day from my new flight date. (Yay!) I went to a testing station (the vaccine wasn’t available yet) and tested positive. I wear a mask, follow all precautions, and stay safe, but still. So that’s another two weeks. Then I got long covid. At this point it felt like the universe was telling me to not go to the us. Finally, I was able to successfully get on a flight. When I got there, my stuff took another month to get there. I hate covid.

I couldn't find my car at the Newark Airport and was convinced someone had stolen my car. I "knew exactly" where I had parked my car. I tracked down 2 police officers who, very calmly, helped me locate my lost car...which I had parked on a completely different level. Yeah, I take a picture of my car's location when I'm in a garage now.

I was ending my leave during my second deployment to Iraq and had to catch a short flight from Tampa to Atlanta (with a few more much longer flights to Ireland/Germany/Kuwait to go) and was pleasantly surprised when another passenger upgraded me (as well as four other folks in uniform) to First Class just because of what we were doing.

Of course, the whole flight I was snoring and probably annoying the "regular" First Class passenger sitting next to me...

I got the chance to fly first class with British Airways, I'd saved up my points for 5 years to afford it. I was checking in to the first class lounge, there was a guy behind me waiting to check in, but was stopped by an older male staff member before he even got to the desk. He had on a pair of trainers, ripped jeans and a old t-shirt. They said that he must be in the wrong area, to which he pointed at his first class ticket. They then asked him who he got the ticket from and he replied that he'd bought it himself. The staff member pretty much insinuated that he must have bought it fraudulently, can you see where this is going - the guy was black.

The staff member then said that he wasn't dressed appropriately for the lounge and the guy pointed at me, who was wearing pretty much the same outfit, he also said that it hadn't been a problem when he'd travelled previously.

As things were starting to get heated another staff member came out to see what the problem was and said to the customer being questioned - Mr Smith (name changed) so good to see you again, what seems to be the problem. The older male staff members face dropped as he realized he'd f'd up.

The staff member was then removed from the floor and was seen being escorted out pretty soon after.

The guy he was questioning was a regular customer known to most of the staff. That was the day I realized that we still have a long way to go in battling racism. He said that it was just the tip of the iceberg compared to what he dealt with on a daily basis.

The doctor who my wife shares an office with owned a small six-seater plane. One day he was like "would you come with me to the airport to help me check for leakages because there is water in the cabin"? Sure we would! So we all got into his car and drove to the airport. (Oh, BTW: The airport is the fifth- or sixth-largest airport in my country with about 10 million passengers per year pre-Covid - so no small airstrip.) At the General Aviation security checkpoint the doctor just stated "they're all with me" - and BAM: We're on the apron! (Well that was easy...) So the doctor, my wife, my son and me walked about 200 metres across the apron with all types of airport vehicles (including big aviation fuel tanker trucks) closely whizzing by. So with no hi-vis vests on or something I think that walk was faily bizarre and dangerous.

After an hour of inspecting the plane we finally found the leak - which added one more bizarre thing: Some bolts on the wing root were slightly loose to leave a tiny gap to let water in. (I'm sorry - WHAT on WHAT was loose?!?) I never set foot in that plane again.

Not me but my friend: she witnessed a man committing suicide at the Orlando airport by jumping from a hotel into the atrium.

My luggage and I both made a 20 minute connecting flight at O Hare in a different terminal.

Late to the party, and not as crazy as the other stories, but when my family and I were flying back from Hawaii last year our airline booked us a flight that we could not catch. We’d fly from Honolulu to Seattle to Detroit. The flight from Seattle to Detroit took off the exact same time our flight from Honolulu arrived at the Seattle airport. We literally had no possible way of making that flight. When my (temperamental!) mother confronted the airline about this mishap, the agent speaking to us said, “B***h it’s not my fault that we’re f*****g low on pilots to fly our aircrafts. I get paid $17 an hour to sit here and listen to rich people complain about how we’re doing our jobs wrong, so I’d appreciate it if you were a tad bit nicer.” We (especially my mother) treated the airline employees much nicer after that.

My friend 18f and I 16f (at the time, we're a little older now) were flying back from Florida to Connecticut but we didn't have a direct flight so we had to go from Florida to Georgia to Kentucky and then to Connecticut. So from Florida to Georgia everything was fine but then when we got to Kentucky there were tornado's on the ground so we couldn't land and had to circle the airport until they subsided. While circling our plane started to run out of gas, or a close to running out as could be, so we had to divert to Ohio to land. Needless to say we missed our connecting flight from Kentucky to Connecticut and had to stay overnight at an airport hotel and catch another flight in the morning to get home. We managed to have a pretty good time through it all though, we met a rly cool couple of guys on the plane and ended up hanging out, went to eat at a Big Boy restaurant that was next to the airport and just made the best of a c**p situation.

Didn’t happen to me, but a friend. It was the mid-1980s, he said and he was trying to get to a certain terminal. He waved down a taxi and some other guy in a business suit climbed in with him. He asked my friend “where to”. He replied with terminal whatever. The guy smacked a $20 bill on the dashboard and said to go as fast as he could. My friend said it was like being in an action movie, the taxi swerving around other cars, people jumping out of the way. He got to the terminal about five minutes early. The guy gave the driver another 20. To this day, my friend has no idea who that guy in the suit was, but he was on time for his flight!

Pre 9/11 when you could walk your loved ones to the gate or meet them at the gate when they returned. This seems so foreign to the younger crowd. Thankful there’s the security there is though. ❤️‍🩹

My friend was cornered, interrogated and checked by anti-narcotics from the airport security in Madrid. It turned out that he was carrying the purse of hi "friend" from the flight which contained 4kg of marijuana. The "friend" had lest the airport but was at the outer boundary when the security caught her. after a lot of commotion, she admitted that she was trafficking marijuana and had handed it to my friend to be safe. Later it was proved when her ID was found in her purse.

OK, this is a long story about the worst airport experience I have had to date.

About a month before COVID-19 bombed the world, I was in Manila preparing to fly back to Beijing. This was early January 2020.

So I'm on line at the gate waiting to board my Cebu Pacific flight when, suddenly, an announcement comes that all flights are being canceled because of volcanic eruption that started spewing ash into the air.

Chaos ensued. Everybody and their mommas, including me, were trying to get information about when the next flights would be, and sadly, there was little information to be had at just that moment. All the airline staff could tell us to do was go to the Cebu Pacific office to get flights changed to a future date or to get a refund. Something told me this would be a problem.

I was right. It was utter pandemonium. I joined throngs of sweaty, confused, pissed off customers crowding the hellishly hot hallway to wait their turn for service. To make matter worse, the line was coming in from all directions, and the staff were giving instructions mostly in Tagalog. To their credit, they also brought everyone badly needed water.

After about an hour in line, I had advanced maybe 6 feet. I decided I couldn't take it anymore. I hate being surrounded by large crowds, especially angry ones in hot conditions, so I left the area for a cool place to sit and think. I figured I would just wait until the line got shorter, and in the meantime, I could just walk around and see if I could spot any other Cebu personnel to help me.

Out of nowhere, one of the young African guys who had been standing in front of me in line before I left it spotted me. He, too, had had enough, and he and his friends had found a more practical solution. He led me downstairs to the bottom floor of the airport to a quiet area where Cebu Pacific staff were serving just a handful of people. God bless that dude!

But now I had a new problem. I needed to head back to Beijing, but there no available flights there until the day after tomorrow. They best they could do was get me on a plane tomorrow night to Shanghai, after which I would have to find my own way back to Beijing. I said screw it, I'll take the Shanghai flight. They booked me and that was that.

Now I just needed a place to stay. It was about 9 pm at that point, and my flight to Shanghai would not be departing until about 8 pm the following night. I had already been in the Manila airport for about 6 hours at that point. So I started searching on my phone for hotels I could book.

There was nothing. No vacancies. Apparently the entire airport had already booked hotel stays as I was trying to figure out how to get a flight :P So I had no choice but to remain in the airport for 23 more hours (not including the 6 that I had already been there).

There's more to this story, but I'll stop here lol. Needless to say, I eventually made it back. Eventually :P

We went to the Soviet Union just before the collapse. First up, we were the only people on the flight not carrying at least one sewing machine. My dad's blind so they made us go sit in one of those awful little cordened off assistance areas then forgot to put us on the plane. Eventually they come for us but by this point they've loaded everyone on and want to make us all 4 sit separately. All the English speaking people decided to stage a protest and refused to sit down at all until we'd been sorted out to sit together. They moved us into a weird little forward cabin area, I don't think it was an actual different class but it was empty except for us and crew going in to steal bottles of vodka from a cupboard to trade for *ahem* personal services performed in the open in that forward cabin area, just feet from us. Everything about that trip was weird, but I think that's what you get when you visit a country that's in the midst of ceasing to be a country.

I was flying from Pittsburgh, PA to Boston, MA with a strange layover in Washington DC. I had just turned 21 and obviously I was excited to finally be allowed to drink. Upon exiting the plane from Pittsburgh in DC, I noticed a few bars in the airport. I had 3.5 hours to kill so, why not? I went into the little airport bar and had myself a big old tall frosty beer. Upon my consumption of my delicious cold beer, I started towards my next flight terminal as it was a bit of a hike from the bar. As I am walking I hear "little girl, please stop". I hear this a second time and decide to look around. I see a female TSA officer behind me walking quickly. I look in front of me to see if the little girl is in front of me. I'm thinking she's looking for a missing little girl. It happens in the airports quite often where parties become separated. I slow down to let her pass me as I do not see this little girl. She pulls up next to me and puts her hand on my shoulder. She says "your mother has been looking for you all over, what makes you think at 11 years old you should wander off?" I'm speechless at this point but for a little context, I am 5'1" 105lbs so I'm a tiny woman. I said "no disrespect ma'am but I am 21 years old and I can wander where I like." I pull away from her and continue to walk towards my terminal. She puts her foot in front of my luggage wheels and stood in front of me. She than asks, "well if your 21, then you will have ID." I showed her my ID and went on my way. I never felt so tiny and small ever in my life. At 21 you feel grown up and this TSA agent was there to put me in my place. Strange day!

One time in Nashville International there was just this random guy who was walking around completely naked. I was going to Tampa to visit family and it was just me and my brother. Pretty gross, but honestly hilarious.

I was on a stopover trip from Toronto to Reykjavík to London (England). When I got to the Reykjavík airport after a 4-ish hour trip, the wind was rocking the plane back and forth and the it could barely land. So, we (my family and I) took a freezing shuttle-bus to the airport. Surprise! The airport was completely deserted; no people whatsoever. Ok, it was 5 AM there, but you would've thought there'd be at least someone. Not by the landing area, the security check, nothing (and this was during the pandemic). Thankfully, we ran into someone who was going where we were and knew their way around- they'd been there before. If my family and I hadn't met them, I don't know what we'd do. They led us to whatever place it was that there was real civilization. I wasn't angry exactly just surprised that there weren't any signs or people except for on that floor that we for some reason couldn't find. Quite peculiar experience to be honest!