A humbling flight mishap...

The last ten hours have giving us a perspective to reminisce because it had been quite humbling. We felt it would be worth sharing the last several hours of our adventure. We believe our lesson will provide thoughtful education for our followers. Who else better to learn from, the mistakes of amateur world travelers!

Cliff note version. We missed our flight out of Phoenix and we are currently in the middle of our eleven hour layover in the grand city of Detroit Michigan. This twist of events totally blind-sided us as we never heard of an airline who would not give us flight credit for missing a flight. We grasp the reality of the meaning of the phrase "for Queen and Country."


More detailed version for those of you who actually read the books... Our original flight was on British Airways (BA), and to our surprise the airfare was non refundable, non transferable, no credits, no questions answered as the rules are the rules. "for Queen and country." And our airfare had these rules of, miss flight, don't pass go, and no getting on the next flight card. Hoocudanoode!

How did we end up in Detroit? Last night after we got to the airport, the BA ticket desk was closed, their 800# was closed (till 0400 next day, some customer service eh) and the flight was already in the air. It was obvious that we were in the mist of one of those are you kidding me moments? As such we had to make an executive decision, there had to be no waffling here or there and were weren't going to fold like a lawn chair. Decisions had to be made ASAP.

Thus we bought a one way ticket to Amsterdam assuming that we still had a return flight home on BA. After our arrival in the grand airport of Detroit we came to find out that our whole BA flight had been cancelled without any options period. The only option is to purchase a return home new ticket.

The adventure must go on and it will. We were able to add a return flight from the new airfare ticket we purchased last night. Let that marinade for bit... We were forced to buy a second ticket (our only ticket) the night of our scheduled flight. Either that or cancel the whole trip.

Now we are good to go, just going to arrive roughly 12 hours later than we initially planned.

For those of you who are keeping score, double check departure time the day before leaving and check the actual ticket not your notes. Occasionally mistakes are made and some of those mistakes are more meaningful lessons than others!

On the bright side, we consider this a weird experience. (Insert 3-4 words of profanity here) Something akin to this should dissolve any potential strangeness from the rest of our adventure. Mishaps can happen, some more humbling than others.

We are Bobby and Jean the amateur world travelers.

Until next time. Ciao!