I’ve made some big mistakes in my travels like booking a hotel for the wrong month and even showing up at the wrong hotel because I know where I stay near the Miami airport every single time. I’ve never booked a ticket to the wrong city, like flying to Rochester, Minnesota instead of Rochester, New York or Sydney in Nova Scotia instead of Sydney, Australia.
One woman, though, showed up at the airport and is going viral on TikTok for booking a ticket for the wrong year. She showed up at the airport intending to leave Zadar, Croatia, only to learn she was a year early for her flight to Milan.
@simp4beanz send help or my mummy i need it x
@simp4beanz will post a video explaining how i got home soon sorry still very sleep deprived xxx
Most of the millions of viewers commenting on the video feel bad for the woman, although some wonder how it’s possible to make this mistake. Unsaid, perhaps, is that most airlines only load their schedules 331 to 355 days into the future. EasyJet offers schedules out a year, so she might have rebooked the day before travel.
So what do you do if you show up to the airport with a ticket for the wrong day?
- Check in online at least you’ll discover what happened before making it to the airport. If you learn of the problem the day before you’ve got more time to sort out the issue.
- Many airlines no longer have change fees on most tickets, and even basic economy tickets may be upgradable to regular economy. I just helped someone with an international basic economy ticket change their dates of travel – United charged $100 to buy out of basic economy, and then a $75 difference in fare for the date change (I got them to waive the fee for taking over the ticket from the online agency which issued it).
- Plead your case. If the first person you speak to isn’t helpful, hang up and call back.
On the one hand this seems more challenging dealing with a low cost carrier like easyJet. On the other hand – as long as they have a flight at the day and time you show up to the airport for, and the flight isn’t sold out, the ticket might not be that much to purchase brand new (the worst case scenario).
A few years ago I showed up to LaGuardia for my flight home to Fort Lauderdale and for some reason my mobile boarding pass was not scanning correctly at TSA. The agent kept trying and was dumbfounded because it was clearly the correct ticket, showing a Delta flight for LGA-FLL for that day. It took several minutes of digging through my email to realize what happened. I had taken the same flight on the same day exactly a year prior (for a completed unrelated reason), and still had the boarding pass saved in my apple wallet.
I booked a Red Eye for 12:05 am on a Friday night. But what I really wanted was the 12:05 am for Saturday night. when I showed up Saturday they told me that my ticket was for the night before.
When I mistakenly booked the Friday 12:05 it said “Sat” so I’m think that was the right flight. It was AA and at the time they were very sympathetic and got me on the flight I needed.
I showed up at the airport a month late for my Interjet flight from Cancún to Havana. In my mind I know the difference between June and July, junio and julio, 6 and 7, but it’s something I find I need to be careful about. Nothing I could do but buy a new ticket, but luckily seats were available and the price was still reasonable.
I arrived a few months early for a flight. I booked a Monday departure with the calendar mistakenly pointed to a distant future month (the date was the same). I quickly bought a new ticket for same day departure and was still able to use the advanced booking when the date finally arrived. The advance booking gave me the cheapest seat on the plane.
I’ve done this with February and March, years ago After all they’re the same day of the week. The best part was that it was a round trip ticket and after many attempts to board me on the outbound, the agent somehow found a way (without noticing the error).
So I made it to my destination but got a rude surprise on attempting to fly the return leg. As a poor university student it was a pretty unfortunate error and while I pleaded that they should never have let me fly DOWN on the wrong day, they still charged me a change fee to fly BACK on the right one.
Midway Airlines (RDU version), if I remember correctly.
Speaking of viral, it’s awesome how Gary’s rants against mask requirements on planes have stopped as the delta variant spreads in his home state.
@747
1000% of nothing is nothing. A mild virus might be spreading but it is a mild virus not worthy of alarm anymore than the flu. You’ve been fooled by the media and political forces who pretend Covid and the delta variant are some dangerous thing when it’s not. No more people died in 2020 than in 2019 in the U.S.
Since summer last year, Easyjet has been opening its schedule up to 18 months in advance (at the time to try and get people to book for this entire summer and get their cash in advance), so quite possible to book a flight more that one year out with them. When you are not dependent of 80s technology from the GDSs you can do that 🙂
@Jackson —-
You’re an uninformed idiot! Please take your dumb logic to another forum .
@Andre, you are right. I know Gary likes to be very open about letting people have their say, but those who spread deadly misinformation really don’t need to be given a forum here. As I recall the post was about showing up at the airport on the wrong date.
She shows the date she bought the ticket which was in May 2021… and who is Kyle?
“Gary likes to be very open about letting people have their say”, agreed, Gary is quite accommodating about that. Yes, “those who spread deadly misinformation really don’t need to be given a forum” ANYWHERE. If there’s any justice and fairness, on judgement day people like @Jackson and governors who try to outlaw mask and vaccine mandates and Faux news ilk and Trumpettes will all go straight to hell (where they belong).
Rushed to the Airport like 4 hours before our flights as I got the times mixed up. What a way to end a Disney trip.
The worst I’ve done is the wrong airport (IAD vs DCA). Luckily they’re less than an hour from each other, so no harm (except an expensive taxi ride). I guess it would have been problems if I wasn’t one of those people that allow plenty of time before the flight.
I use TripIT to store all of my itineraries. TripIt will visually show if anything is out of schedule
Sorry @Jackson. If you’re going to spread misinformation at least do a little research so it’s not incredibly obvious that you’re wrong.
In 2020, approximately 3,358,814 deaths occurred in the United States (Table). The age-adjusted rate was 828.7 deaths per 100,000 population, an increase of 15.9% from 715.2 in 2019. (Source: CDC annual US mortality data.)
20 years ago, I drove my mom to Newark airport for a 1:45pm flight with Cathay Pacific (so I thought). I got to the airport and was surprised to see that there was no one in line. An employee looked at my ticket and told me it’s for 1:45am. The flight has already left. UGH! This was at a time when Newark didn’t have that many flights leaving past midnight so I never thought there would be any flights at 1:45am. It was an award flight so I called Cathay Pacific right away. The agent was kind enough to salvage my mom’s return flight in business. She said normally, this can’t be done once the first flight has left, but since the plane hasn’t arrived in Hong Kong yet, she was able to save the return flight. Since then, I’ve been very careful about checking AM or PM in my plane ticket.
Jackson Waterson….
Wow. You are so wrong. My brother is the Managing Physician in the ER of our regional hospital. He told me the ICU is running at 125% of capacity, with more than 90% of those patients there because of COVID. He also said that 98% of all COVID related patients admitted to the hospital were not vaccinated. Look at what’s happening in Florida, Texas and many other states. Saying that COVID is no worse than the common flu is simply not true. Regardless of what you believe in regards to masks and vaccinations, COVID is real as a very serious health crisis.
I booked for the day before I wanted to actually depart. I thought I was flying out of Cartagena to Bogota Tuesday night for an early Wednesday morning international flight home, instead my flight out of Cartagena was for Monday night. Didn’t discover the mistake until Monday late afternoon. I was already checked into my hotel for the two days prior and was scheduled for three nights. Unfortunately I had to scramble. I lost the points for the third night and I had to rebook my airport hotel in Bogota. Thankfully I caught this in time. It sucked having to leave a day earlier than I planned, but I wasn’t able to reschedule my international flight so had no choice.
@Jackson Waterson
If we’re lucky Delta or some other variant will make you a statistic.
My worst mistake was forgetting I had booked a return flight to a different airport in DC. I flew to China via New York, departing out of BWI. However, I booked the return to DCA via EWR. I was aware of what I had booked at the time of booking. However, when it came time to travel, I forgot and drove and parked at BWI. On the way back, after my long PVG to EWR flight, I realized that I was not headed to where my car was parked. I ended up taking Amtrak from EWR to BWI, which was roughly the price of a taxi ride from DCA to BWI.
I missed a flight from Delhi to Newark, by thinking that my (nonrefundable) “0230” ticket on BA (or maybe it was “2:30”) was for the afternoon, the same day but 12 hours later!
That was quite an expensive mistake, and I fess up to it so that others might avoid making the same wrong assumption in the future.
Years ago, at my first job, there was an assistant whose job it was to book travel. Mistakes were made all the time – AM versus PM, the wrong day, ridiculous routings. I happened to catch all of those, but some at the last minute. It was one of those experiences that taught me the importance of controlling your own travel arrangements. I see people do the IAD/DCA mistake all the time. I don’t think I ever have, but if you are a frequent flyer, you probably (a) know which airlines fly out of each to what destinations, and (b) are always checking your reservations for changes and would notice it.
I’m with Arthur … set up your own system and rely only on your own system. When I started flying Continental first class on upgrades, I paid EXTREMELY close attention to any travel I booked. There was no way I’d risk flying in coach across the country. I don’t put information on my phone, I don’t use some unknown service for remembering passwords, I don’t ever rely on anything electronic as the last word. My trips go on a calendar on my hard drive. I note all the details and print the thing as soon as I get the basic trip hung together. I review every single confirmation for accuracy the minute it hits my inbox. If I’m up to my ears in a project, I will add an hour to my day to review confirmations and update the calendar. That calendar is my last word, that calendar that I created and maintain, that calendar that is right there in front of me on a piece of paper, and on my laptop just before I leave for the airport. Makes for very relaxing trips.
patrick says:
August 10, 2021 at 6:53 pm
I booked a Red Eye for 12:05 am on a Friday night. But what I really wanted was the 12:05 am for Saturday night. when I showed up Saturday they told me that my ticket was for the night before.
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I worked in an administrative capacity for Amtrak for over thirty years. We had this problem a lot, when passengers booked the wrong day for a train departing between 0000 and 0300. I put out an instructional bulletin to all the agents that basically said THE DAY ENDS AT MIDNIGHT, NOT WHEN YOU GO TO BED. So we trained them to ask questions when a passenger, say, wanted to travel between Dunsmuir, California (departure 0035, or 12:35 am) and San Francisco. The passenger would say he wanted to leave on Friday. The agent would call up availability for Friday and book, then tell the passenger, “Your train leaves on Friday morning at 12:35 am, 35 minutes after midnight.” Almost every time the passenger would reply, “No! I want the train leaving Friday NIGHT!” The agent would rebook for Saturday morning and tell the passenger, “Your train leaves on Saturday morning at 12:35 am. You need to stay up late on Friday night to catch this train.” In almost every case the passenger got the train he wanted and knew what he had to do. A train leaving after 0300 or so were normally not a problem as most passengers knew what day it left.
@carletonm that is an awesomely funny accurate way to explain. Great job!