I can’t recall what year, late 90’s early 2000. We did a Black Bear hunt southeast Alaska. I walked up to the airline counter in Anchorage, Alaska to check baggage. I set a large fish box on the scale. Airline lady said what’s in the box, I said a frozen black bear skin. Back then and may still be common to bring hides and fish back from Alaska. She said a few choice works about killing animals. Grabbed her sign that said closed, plopped it down in front of me, said we are not checking anybody else in for the flight and walked off. It was about 30-40 minuets early for her to do that and there were at least 10 people behind me and not just the guys in my hunting party. Regular people trying to check baggage. People were pissed.

We callled the airline and raised he….ll, they got us lined up for a flight really early the next morning. It gets worse, cab service supposed to pick us up at the hotel never showed, we couldn’t get a ride to the airport and missed our flight. Cost everyone of us a 1200 dollar one way ticket back to Houston. We had a layover in Las Vegas. One of the guys headed straight to a slot machine at the airport. I said what are you doing. He said going to win my plane ticket back. He didn’t win the whole 1200 bucks but he won 6-800 bucks on a slot if I recall.

I guess we got the wrong person at the check in counter that day, the airport in Anchorage is full of Hunter spring and fall. Would think they would be used to it.

I've seen where TSA missed an RPG on an international flight. I have also personally seen many things they did not miss. I was the baggage handling system administrator for a very large airport for about 6 years. NOT one bit sorry I no longer have that job duty.

Riding a KC-135 to Panama. Troop seating with a spare jet engine in the middle. Box nasty with cold chicken, warm coke, and stale bread. At least we could smoke.

Air travel has been a PITA lately. Really too many to list, most minor inconveniences, but this one takes the cake a few weeks ago

SWA: Had a layover in Denver. We were 30 minutes getting into Denver, but still had 30-40 minutes before flight left for Lovefield. As I am walking to the gate, get a notification on my phone that the departure time has changed to 4 hours earlier. I keep going to the gate to find highly upset folks. They canceled that flight immediately and I was rebooked on the next one out, which was the last flight out of Denver that night. That flight cancelled after being delayed. My rebook took me from Denver to KC to Orlando to Lovefield over a period of 2 days. Finally got to a gate agent, who was polite, but she said that was the best they could do. They did refund me the ticket; I went to Enterprise and rented a car and drove to Lovefield, got my truck and headed home. I had a coworker who was also stranded in Denver and I made it home before he got out on another flight to Houston.

Wasn’t bad but odd - coming in from Denver to DFW arrival time 11:30ish pm. As we got close to DFW area pilot said we were diverting to Austin due to storm backups at DFW. Right after that pilot said we were landing and I knew we weren’t near Austin and looking out window knew it was not DFW Airport. We landed at Alliance Airport (FW) and waited on the runway there for about two hours. Then took off and flew all of 20 miles to DFW Aiport.
Shortest connecting flight ever.

Here's a funny one. This happened in the early 1980's.

My ex worked for a structural steel company in sales and had a big customer at the Texaco refinery in Port Arthur (not Texaco anymore) and this guy wanted to take a buddy down to Lake Guerrero. He'd been down there before over 20 times but wanted to show off a bit for his buddy. Wife got the boss to OK a trip on his private Lear Jet with me and I got a buddy to go with me. Went to the Texaco guy's usual outfitter and really had a great trip but here's the catch. We flew into Brownsville from Beaumont, got clearance to go into Mexico so hopped the river over to Matamoros, land, and we sit, and sit for about 45 minutes. No other air traffic seen on the ground or in the air. Finally the pilot came back and said it would take a few more minutes, took a handful of $20 bills and 2 - 6 packs (Coors I think) , went up to the tower and was back in 10 minutes and we took off landing in CD Victoria by the lake. Coming home he just took a single 6 pack up and there was no delay.

I’ve traveled a fair amount for work over the years. Spent nights at O’Hare and Hartsfield. Most recently got to spend an “extra” night in Richmond and then routed through Logan to get back to DFW. All airlines suck.

I have soooo many memories of bad flights and bad airport problems. I’d be writing for an hour. But…I do have one fun memory. Wife and I got on a plane to go to Hawaii. Wife had the window seat and they stuck me in the middle seat. I was grumbling about that, when I see this super hot blonde in the aisle. She sat next to me, much to my happy surprise. The wife glared at me, but it wasn’t MY fault she had that seat. Her guy was in the aisle seat across the aisle. Nice guy. I asked this goddess where they were going, and she said they were on HIS honeymoon. Turns out that his fiancé ditched him at the alter, so he asked his favorite stripper to go with him. Well, it was a long flight, so we talked till we ran out of words and then it was dark and everyone dozed off. The goddess was asleep and snuggled into my right shoulder. I thought my wife’s head would explode when she saw that. I guess that made up for a few bad flights.

no really bad trips... but about 10 or 12 years ago was on SW airlines flight from FTLaud/Hollywood to Dallas and after everyone was seated, we had an hour long weather delay before takeoff. Found out the nervous young lady next to me was Herb Kellers grand niece, from Boca Raton. She was flying to Dallas to spend the Christmas holidays with him and other family members. She was telling me all about him and how she didnt like flying when she got a call from him. He (mr keller) knew she didnt like flying and called to reassure her everything would be ok.

Without going into detail, a couple of years ago my 7 hour direct flight to Anchorage on American took 48 hours on United and Delta through Denver (where we spent the night) and Seattle. Wouldn’t have been as bad of a deal if we didn’t have two days worth of wasted rental car and VRBO that we were paying for without being able to use them.

To make matters worse, 50% of our parties’ luggage was lost and one guy’s didn’t show up until it arrived at his house 3 weeks later

Ha . . . great story !!!!

I flew domestically for 20 years for work... Once or twice a month and the worse thing that happened to me was spending the night in a hotel after my flight was late and my connection was the last flight to that particular destination... Missed the meeting the next morning so I worked a deal for a $250 flight voucher and headed back home the next morning... My wife flew internationally for 30 years and I asked her... She got stuck in Florence, Italy for 2 days... Said she had a great time on the company's dime... Expensed it all... Dan

Sitting on the taxiway at Laguardia on a fine July day waiting for takeoff when I notice many emergency vehicles. We taxied out to the end by the river and then suddenly powered down and all the emergency vehicles converged on our plane. At first they wouldn't tell us what was going on and then after several minutes calmly told us there had been a bomb threat on our aircraft and stay seated. Sat there another 30 minutes while they unloaded the luggage and cargo, no power no air, people are sweating and irritable as hell. It was another 30 minutes of that before they finally said we could get off and a bus would be there to pick us up. AA managed to get us on another plane and in the air after a few hours. Later they said the person that made the threat was located and arrested and made threats before. Overall AA handled it well as can be.

Watched 2 guys get in a fight on a SWA cattle car flight. The seats were so close you couldn't read a paper without the paper hitting the guy in front of you. The guy in front asked once for the other guy to stop it and then after the second time it was on like donkey kong.

American Airlines.
We were going to my son's graduation in Raleigh. He was receiving his PhD.
We arrived at wonderful DFW on time and took a seat. We were in the C group. They never called the C group. We asked when we could board and they told us that we should have boarded with the B group and that "we don't actually have to call your group".
They sold our tickets.

So, they sent us to Chicago with an overnight lay over. No luggage of course, it was in Raleigh.
They flew us from Chicago to Raleigh the next morning. We got there just in time to make the event.

American Airlines. - "Let Good Take Flight"