2025, Family, Travel, Uncategorized

Airport Schedules

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We are finally home from Quebec after a wonderful time. The Montreal airport is quite fascinating, made even more so by my very poor ability to make a cogent travel itinerary and a computer glitch by Delta Airlines.

For reasons even I cannot fathom, I scheduled our return flight to Minneapolis and thence to Bismarck for 6:10 am on Sunday morning. That meant we needed to be at the airport at 3:10 am according to Delta Airline’s advisory to be at the airport three hours before take off for international flights. I had no idea that just about everything at the Pierre Trudeau airport closed at 8:00 pm.

It is hard to sleep knowing you have to get up at 2:00 am to catch a taxi to the airport. We decided to go to the airport at 10:00 pm on Saturday night and try to doze as we could. When we arrived we were informed that the Delta ticket booths and most everything else were closed until 3:00 am. We signed in to our flight when the ticket agents arrived on the dot at 3:00am.. That entailed a wait until 3:30 am until the folks who operated the baggage conveyor belt arrived. That is their regular schedule. We were then shepherded into another large room with several hundred people to wait until 4:15 am until the TSA staff arrived, and thence until 4:30am when the US Customs staff arrived. I am happy to report we had no issues at US Customs.

I made our flight reservations in late March, and the Delta computer miscalculated our arrival and departure times in Minneapolis because it didn’t take the time change from the Eastern time zone to Central time zone into account. Even the Montreal ticket agents were fooled. Our Montreal flight arrived late in Minneapolis. We feared we had only 15 minutes to catch our Bismarck flight. We tore to the gate. The door was closed, and we feared we were too late to board. The rather confused ticket agent told us that the plane didn’t leave for an hour and 15 minutes. That hour from from Eastern to Central time made a huge difference!

We arrived home in Dickinson at 12:00 pm on Sunday after no sleep since we got up at 8:00 am Saturday morning. I am surprised I could even drive the 100 miles home. I vowed after this that I will engage a travel agent in the future for any domestic or international travel.

Travel horror stories or happy accounts? Know any rigid schedule adherents?

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25 thoughts on “Airport Schedules”

  1. The, most aggravating was when I had to be in Barcelona in time to get on a ship. In the 24 hours it took me to eventually get there. I ended up on three different flights than I had originally intended because other flights were late. I even experienced that horrible thing that you think only happens on TV, when you RUN to the gate and the plane is still there, but the door is closed so you get to watch the plane taxi and take off without you.Anyway, I did make the boat, but they actually ended up holding it for me for 10 minutes thanks to an extremely competent and persistent ground supplier.

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  2. I resided in Taiwan and would travel to the USA every couple years. I flew Northwest, and accumulated a lot of miles. Once, changing planes in Osaka, the coach section was overbooked, and Northwest’s computer bumped me up to first class. I slept flat on a bed across the Pacific. For my remaining years in Taiwan (and for as long as Northwest continued), I would approach gate agents and share the news that I had once enjoyed a free bump to first class trans-Pacific, and ask if they had another of those free on “This flight”. sometimes I got a smile, sometimes just a shake of the head, but never another trip like that one in 2007.

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  3. Most memorable was returning home in August ’69 from summer in San Francisco for my senior year of college. After checking in, I had apparently dropped/lost my boarding pass in some concourse. This was before computers, you see – I was in such a panic. I have no idea how, but some extremely competent agent managed to get me on that flight without my boarding pass.

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  4. Our gate ticket agent in Montreal was really nice, and we had time to visit. We had requested a cart to drive us to our gate in Minneapolis because of our erroneous concern that we wouldn’t have enough time to get to our Bismarck flight. We were seated in the exit row over the wings on both flights and if you need a cart, it is assumed you are too feeble to assist in the case of emergency and can’t sit in the exit row. He assured us that we would have enough time to make our Bismarck flight in the 48 minutes that had been allotted, so I agreed to cancel the cart. That way he didn’t have to find other passengers to change seats with us on the Montreal flight. When we arrived in Minneapolis, we found that our seats on the Bismarck flight had been mysteriously upgraded to Comfort + just behind first class. I am sure he did that for us.

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    1. Sad but true — not many travelers worry too much about what employees at the airport or on airplanes are going through. I’m sure that earned you a big fat gold star as well as the upgrade.

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      1. He also put special stickers on our suitcases indicating that they needed to be transferred rapidly to the next plane. That actually wasn’t the case given the time zone error.

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  5. I should add that yesterday we were in three time zones, as our town is in the Mountain time zone. Bismarck,100 miles east, is in Central.

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  6. There is almost always some glitch. You just never know what it will be. When we went to Scotland back in 1990, we were in seats against the bulkhead that didn’t fully recline. Consequently we didn’t sleep much on the flight. We arrived tired, picked up our rental car (a stick shift, as all of them were) and had to get accustomed to driving on the left, and got a flat tire by the time we reached the first little town. We were just too tired to cope and couldn’t even figure out where the jack and spare tire were stored. We went into a pub to find out if there was a garage in town and a couple of the locals came out and helped us change our tire. Then we had to drive back to the airport to exchange cars.

    When we went to Wales in 2015, we had reserved a rental car but when we got to the Cardiff airport the car rental had no record of it. We ended up waiting around for two or three hours (this at the end of a trans-Atlantic flight) while they straightened it out. Then we had to drive (on the left, stick shift again) for a couple of hours to our first accommodation. On our return from Wales we were delayed three or four hours on the plane in Amsterdam while a crew repaired one of the plane’s restrooms.

    When we went to Kyoto last fall, we left home about 4:30 AM for a morning flight to Toronto. That took a couple of hours, then we had a two hour layover until we boarded for Tokyo. The Tokyo leg was about 13 hours. Our seats in economy were so cramped that if I needed something from my underseat bag I had to hook the handle with my toe to bring it within reach. There was not enough legroom to bend over. When we arrived in Tokyo, we waited in a long, long line to pass through customs, then had to take a train from the airport to the bullet train station. To get to the airport train, we passed through several gates, where you put your ticket into a slot on one side of the gate and picked it up on the other. Somewhere along the way, Robin forgot to pick up her ticket on the far side and that entailed some lengthy machinations with railroad personnel to procure a substitute ticket.
    The train ride to the bullet train station was about an hour and a half. The bullet train to Kyoto took another couple of hours. Then we had to catch a cab in Kyoto to get to our hotel. We had a printed map of the hotel location and Robin speaks serviceable Japanese, so we managed to get to the vicinity of our hotel, but the hotel was located on a one-way street and the cab driver brought us to the nearest corner but not to the door of the hotel itself. By then we had been awake more than 24 hours and were incapable of navigating our way unassisted. We wandered around the block, not finding our hotel. Finally, Robin asked a couple of young women for directions and, as we found to be typical of Japanese helpfulness, they walked us to our hotel.

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      1. For the most part, she has a kid’s vocabulary, with no specialized vocabularies. But having grown up in Kyoto, she pronounces fluently in a Kyoto dialect so the locals always assumed she understood more than she in fact could.

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  7. Rise and Shine,Baboons,

    Wow Renee, I hope you are now rested and awake. That sounds pretty intense. I arrived home yesterday evening, having retrieved Lou in Decorah, then Phoebe at my friend’s house. We all arrived home, then collapsed. But what a fun weekend it was! Lou and his cousin were out and about in the Decorah area, visiting family and nature sites. I was in Davenport, Iowa for my Stratton cousin reunion. What a bunch of old people we are now!

    While there I visited the antique store run by the American Pickers show (yes, they are closing the Nashville store after Frank’s death, but the LeClaire, Iowa store remains in place with no plans to close). As we arrived and I got out of the car, I saw a Bald Eagle take a fish out of the Mississippi River, then fly away. That is a thrill that never gets old, no matter how often I witness it. All I bought there was a t-shirt, but it was fun to look around, then cross that experience off the Bucket List.

    Ben, after browsing through the weekend post, I see your mother has passed on. What a bittersweet thing for you at her very old age.

    I am spending the day watching weather and getting myself organized for the week, then the big hip replacement surgery a week from today.

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  8. I could tell many but all were overcome but not always delightfully. Never flown to another country. Flown to Alaska many times without incident. Worst I recall was commuter flight to Pittsburgh landing around 9 for 10 flight to Minneapolis. Flight canceled. Stuck there for 9 hours. I lived in Two Harbors then so got home very late.

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  10. Most of my travel stories are about epic drives, four in bad snow storms, one through bad floods but I did not know it. It was dark and the Kansas freeways are usually at a raised level. Jacque mentioned Decorah. I once left Newfoundland MN at 5 and drove to Decorah for some senior year event for our daughter. Do not remember what time I got there.

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  12. Having had to work a schedule that was created for me by someone else for most of my career, I’ve become someone who is almost always on time. I like to be early for appointments and flight schedules.

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  14. Coming home from a trip to Ireland/Scotland turned into a marathon. I had a 6A flight from Edinburgh to Amsterdam – on time and no problems. We departed Amsterdam on time. A couple hours past Dublin, there was a medical emergency on the plane and the person needed to be in a hospital. Iceland was the closest airport but weather was bad so the plane turned around and flew to Dublin. We were on the ground for about 90 minutes and could not leave the plane. Trash was removed, snacks & beverages were replenished along with toilet paper. We finally took off headed for Minneapolis. As we neared the states, an announcement was made that the flight attendants had nearly reached their time limit and could not travel all the way to MSP. So we landed in Boston, where the crew was changed quickly but apparently there was a bunch of paperwork that needed to be done. Once again we were trapped on the plane for another 90 minutes. We finally made it back to MSP without any further delays. But we landed nearly 6 hours late. It was an ugly way to end an otherwise wonderful trip.

    My very next trip was to Alaska. The tour company routed us from MSP to Dallas (plane change) to Anchorage on AA. We were due to land in Anchorage at 8P. As we were flying past Washington, there was another medical emergency (!) so we landed at SeaTac. Once the person was safely off the plane, we had to disembark with our carryons at the gate for about 30 minutes – nothing was open so we just milled about. Once reboarded, we continued to Anchorage without any more delays but we arrived close to midnight. By the time we got to our hotel room it was nearly 2A and we had to meet our group at a 6:30 breakfast in order to make out train to Denali. It was a LONG first day of touring.

    Thankfully my two most recent trips proceeded with no travel issues.

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