S/o Craziest Flights

amother

Firebrick

Sun, Oct 08 2017, 7:54 am

I am being anonymous because tons of ppl heard this story
4 years ago we went on a trip to Israel for sukkos. We were 14 ppl including me dh and my 2 kids aged 2 and 9 months and my parents and siblings...youngest sibling 7 months. So 3 babies. I had a brother learning there who was coming back home after sukkos so it was 15 ppl the way back. We had booked on transaero. A Russian airline. Everything was fine on the way there.
After yom tov our flight was at 5 am. We go used packing. Cleaning up. Went out to eat and at 1 am we decided everyone should nap till 2.30 and then the driver was supposed to come to take us to the airport. Evwryone was napping besides me and dh and my mother was keeping herself awake by playing solitaire. I had booked my bothers ticket separate since it was a one way ticket. Anyways I was laying down and decided to double check my brothers flight for some reason. I checked my email and saw that although 5 am was doublw lined in red that was the connecting flight! The flight from Israel to Russia was in fact at 1.am. I freaked out and checked all the other 14 tickets. They were all the same. I told th. He said run go tell ur mother. My mother was half asleep playing a game on her laptop. I brought her my phone and said look. She said What? I told her loom at the timing. She said it says 5 am. I told her look at the fine print. She said uh oh. We decided to call the airline and see what can be done. She said it's a 15 THOUSAND DOLLAR mistake. It can't be. We called the airline. They said that there is no other flight and we need to pay to get onto the next flight. My mother asked to check and see if it was on time. They said one minute and hung up after a 20 minute wait. We called again and the next two said it was delayed till 3. We said we will try to make it. The driver came we rushed as fast as we can. Out apt was in an alley and we had to shlep all our luggage. Carseat and strollers to the next block. We packed it so fast. We rushed to the airport. On the way we left a message for our travel agent in ny. We got to the airport and ran as fast as we can. We asked the airport personel where to go. He told us to go to THE LAST LAST AVAILABLE LINE AND IT WAS EMPTY. We went there and they said flight is delayed till 4. We breathed a sigh if relief. We started going thru check in and all the ticket lines were completely dark. She got up to the counter that said transaero. Completely dark. She knocked on the window and a little tiny lady opened it up. She said "r u the group of 15?". My mother said yes. She started processing the tickets. Then they told us plane as leavibg in 15 minutes. We freaked. We were tons of ppl and luggage and packages and still hadn't gone thru security. We somehow pushed they security as fast as we can and started going to the gate. Our gate was the last last last last gate in the whole airport. We went as fast as we can. When I neared the gate a airport worker asked me . R u one of the 15. I said yes. He said run. And go on I will deal with the stroller and luggage. We made it to the plane. Miraculously even had seats together. As soon as the last person in our group got on. The door slammed shut and we took off.
The plane was delayed for no reason. The passengers were angry having sat on it for hours. The ppl working and no clue why. We sat on that plane thinking what good deed we did to make that plane. The rest of the flight was uneventful.

Funny thing. One suitcase with our silver wear ended up by mistake as hand luggage. My mother decided to shlep he service for 48 with her since ahe had extra luggage room
In Israel they confiscated our knives. In Russia they took away all forks. We came home with 100 spoons.

mommy3b2c

Sun, Oct 08 2017, 8:03 am

amother wrote:

I died ten times while reading this story.

amother

Aquamarine

Sun, Oct 08 2017, 8:28 am

Back with another one. We were traveling to e"y from nyc, me dh, a teenaged dd and a small dd. We get to JFK and they are not finding a record of our reservation. After a few minutes they realized it was because we were supposed to be flying out of Newark! (For non-Nyers-- this means we were an hour and a half from the correct airport.) There was no way we could make it. The airline was incredibly nice but explained that while they could probably fit at least one of us on the plane, no way could they find space for a family of 4. We explained that our little one had to travel with one of us, but other than that, we were open to anything they could do. They told us to wait. And wait. And wait. I am still not sure how they did it but 15 minutes before flight time they told us they had seats for all of us. Two were even together. They loaded our luggage and got us to the gate on golf carts.

amother

Cerulean

Sun, Oct 08 2017, 8:53 am

I went to E"Y for the first time when I was 18 with two friends.
On the way back home for various reasons I was the only one going home.
I was never out of the country and I was so nervous going home myself. Luckily I met a friend that was on my flight who I haven't seen for ages. We were talking and the flight was delayed an hour and then another hour. In the meantime over the intercom they were announcing a Mr. So and so over and over again. In the beginning I didn't pay any attention to it because they were calling a mans name but after a couple of hours I thought the name in their heavy Israeli accent sound like my name which is very unusual. My friend suggested I go to the counter and ask in person who they are calling. It turns out they were calling my brothers name.
I borrowed his suitcase and I forgot to take his ID tag off the suitcase. They could've leave because their passenger list didn't match the suitcase. When that was cleared up we borded right away.
How embarrassed was I.

amother

Powderblue

Sun, Oct 08 2017, 9:50 am

amother wrote:

Not crazy, per se, but I was once on a flight to Israel and someone got sick on the plane and an announcement was made asking for a doctor. Something like 50 people jumped up. My mom said "well, on a flight full of Jews, of course there are a ton of doctors..."

And this happened before I was born, but my grandfather had a brother who never married, just dated many very beautiful women over the years. One such woman was very concerned that no one should know her age, to the point that she whited out the year on her passport. My great uncle was going on a vacation abroad with her and she got arrested at the airport because of it. They did work it out eventually, but that story remains a favorite in family lore!

I'm rotfl. How old was she??? LOL

amother

Royalblue

Sun, Oct 08 2017, 11:55 am

A couple years ago, we were flying with 3 little kids from Newark to E"Y with a stopover in Europe. We were staying in Philly, at least an hour and a half from the airport. When we got to Newark, we were told that they had overbooked the number of babies on the flight and we couldn't fly.

We waited at least 3 more hours until they could make arrangements. They told us to run down and hire a cab, at their expense to drive us to JFK, and they would put us on a flight there. We got to the cabs, who wouldn't take the airline vouchers and we didn't have enough money on us to pay the long cab ride ourselves.

After an airline representative came down to argue with the cabdrivers, we finally all returned to the airline desk, where they tried to make other arrangements. In the meantime they gave us food vouchers so I walked around and bought whatever I could. They finally told us they booked us on a flight for the next morning from Philly (closer to where we were staying) to JFK and straight to E"Y.

At this point we had been in the airport for at least 6 hours and could not get through to my in-laws to tell them we were on our way back. The airline arranged for a taxi for us (this time they took the vouchers) and we got in the cab. We reached my in-laws at 2 in the morning but with all our knocking they didn't hear us. We walked 10 minutes to the building of other family members. We didn't want to wake them up so I waited with the kids while my husband walked to 7-11 and called his parents from there. They finally woke up and came to pick us up, feeling so bad.

We got to the Philly airport in the morning and went to check-in but were told that in Newark they had booked us for a flight from Philly to ATLANTA to JFK to E"Y. We started yelling that there was no way were were traveling with 3 little kids (oldest was 4) with 2 stop-overs. After a while of negotiations we were finally put in a limo that took us straight to JFK, where we flew direct to E"Y.

We've had other stories but that one still tops the list.

Chloe

Sun, Oct 08 2017, 1:55 pm

Quote:

amother wrote:

I'm rotfl. How old was she??? LOL

Yeah, like way to go to now have everyone know how old you are, not only then but now decades later LOL

too funny.

Chloe

Sun, Oct 08 2017, 2:00 pm

Quote:

mommy3b2c wrote:

I died ten times while reading this story.

OMG, I know LOL

, especially coming home with 48 servings of only spoons after all this hullaballoo.

amother

Floralwhite

Sun, Oct 08 2017, 2:42 pm

I have a few but I think I'll post just one now because I need to run out. Anon because I've definitely told this IRL.

It was one of those pre-chag flights to Israel. Tons of families and screaming babies. My flying m.o. is to have some beer at the airport pre-flight, and then drink on the plane. This makes my long-term traveling so much easier.

So I'm sitting next to this older Israeli woman. A baby starts crying and she sighs loudly. We take off and I can see she keeps making comments about the screaming babies. I suggest she have some alcohol, telling her it really helps. Another baby screams and she says, okay. She starts drinking some wine.

Shortly afterward, she starts talking to me. The things she's telling me about her life sound highly unusual, I'm not sure whether to believe her but she is so fascinating, I stop watching my movie and start talking to her. To protect her identity, unfortunately, I won't post what her career was. Consider this a "blind item". (She had two very high profile jobs, that involved regularly rubbing elbows with prominent Israelis as well as American celebrities, and she was dropping dirt on multiple people.)

Some more wine later, she also tells me she had been married and then divorced from a man in the knesset, she tells me she had him investigated and then she tells me what the investigator found and why she left him. (Again I am so sorry if this is obnoxious, but in case anyone can figure out who it was, I don't want to post it here.)

Anyway, the whole time I am beyond fascinated but could not fully believe these stories, so I decided who cares if this is true, she's more interesting than my movie. Once I land, I Google her, and everything about her life pans out. She has a Wikipedia page, as do multiple family members. (She did not tell me that one family member was involved in a MAJOR US scandal, but I found that out once googling her.)

That was a very interesting flight.

ETA: I just remembered how the conversation started: she pointed to the actor on my screen (I'm so the worst that I can't even remember who it was) and she made some comment about having gone out with him or slept with him a couple of times. My initial reaction was, "really... Uh huh."