I’m used to American nagging at JFK, but I was hopeful on my flight to Miami this year. I was with one of my close friends and felt nothing could drag me down, and I was traveling with her $500+ electric guitar, and no one was messing with it. Looked like an absolute badass who shouldn’t.
Everything was going well when I settled into the queue with my friend, an old lady. My guitar was stowed in the luggage compartment above my row as instructed by the flight attendants.
Nevertheless, my peace was disturbed when Karen of Miami towered over me. She told me to move my guitar because it was too big. When I declined she started yelling at me in Spanish. The old man next to me was surprised. A Colombian friend I was traveling with started yelling at her back.
The overhead bin one row in front of her had just the right size space for her suitcase. When a man sitting near us pointed it out, Miamian Karen said, “Look,” and she urged me to put the guitar in a space that was clearly too small to fit. When I refused, she started trying to move my guitar on her own.
unacceptable.
My queue and I called the flight attendant, who immediately closed the cabin my guitar was in and told her to move her stuff elsewhere.
Hope she had a good flight.
–Eda Acre
I will make the most of it, I told myself. When I returned from studying abroad in Nice, France, I was flying around Europe and the mainland US on the cheapest flight option. “Home” was her four-day journey. A six hour train, his one night in an airport hotel, a transatlantic flight, his one night in an airport hotel, a flight to Minneapolis, his one night with an uncle, and finally a shuttle to Rochester, Minnesota. So I ended up spending her three weeks with my grandmother, my mother, my extended family, and my boyfriend. A long-awaited break after a busy semester, a rewarding but exhausting visit to the French hospital system.
Worried that I wouldn’t have time to get off the plane from Milan, clear customs, and catch the daily 9:40 p.m. JetBlue flight from New York to Minneapolis, my father booked my flight. was doing. “Annabelle, I know how these airports work,” he told me — he was a transatlantic commercial pilot for a long time. He even checked the arrival history of the Emirates I was on – ‘consistently late’.
He emailed me my itinerary many months in advance. He’s usually good at these things and so knowledgeable that I rarely think twice about where I’m going, but when I put the address in he hooks up with an Uber and it’s an hour and a half drive away. appeared and then charged him four times as much as expected. My father booked me a hotel at LaGuardia Airport. I was landing at John F. Kennedy Airport. Normally I can deal with things like this but this is my beloved dog Tippy, the Lhasa Apso my parents gave me when I was in first grade and by all accounts It was also the moment my father let me know that he was my best dog. A friend — was going to the vet with borderline renal failure. After sobbing for the entire 90-minute drive, everything turned morbidly worse when I realized my hotel room overlooked a cemetery. Oh my god, do I have to choose a tombstone for Tippy?
can not understand How to keep yourself involved in these travel debacles — at least this was mild by my standards, but it all worked out in the end. Even my father has learned to double check everything.
– Annabelle Moore
Two Air Canada employees gleefully watch until the airline’s overbearing weight restrictions force them to move the contents of their luggage from one suitcase to another. You should have dumped him three years ago, but somehow you never did. Now every traveler who passes you on the floor knows you. it was a bomb. I had no shame until I achieved all this.
– Hannah Mark
Our trip to Greece started with a canceled flight from Nashville the night before and was riddled with cancellations, delays and missed connections. The airline quickly rebooked me on his connecting flight through DC, but as I lounged at an empty gate in Dulles, it was announced that my flight to Montreal would be delayed.
By then, I was tempted to get a flight home — I was still in America after all. Just a later flight allowed me to reach Frankfurt before Athens. Of course, that flight was delayed. On top of that, a family of four had to be lowered onto the runway. Still, I thought I could make the next connection, but I couldn’t. His six hours in Germany were anything but pleasant. They thought I had explosives in my backpack, so I had to re-enter security. In the end, we arrived at the Athens airport nearly 12 hours behind schedule.
It was my first time traveling abroad, so I thought, “At least returning home won’t be any worse.” Worst of all, I ended up stranded in Germany for her 3 days. Pleasant highlights: his humiliating attempt to take a cab, brushing his teeth with hand soap, his three-hour-long line to rebook a canceled flight. On my last trip through Frankfurt airport (my passport stamps are only 4 of him from here), all 3 of his bags were seen and my body went through security. Arriving in Chicago, one flight away from home, was another of his three-hour queues through customs, driving through O’Hare with his shoes untied, and it took him five minutes to board. . I finally got home in mid-July, and my suitcase is still lost.
Overall, my study abroad experience, including the COVID-19 test, was overwhelmingly positive.
– Abigail Dixon
Eda Aker
Eda Aker was interviewed by Yale Law School and contributed to WKND. She is in her sophomore year at her college, Timothy Dwight, majoring in Global Affairs.
