Or, What You Tell The Airline When Your Plane Left Without You
What, you missed your flight? Reasons or explanations for missing your flight that should be accepted by airlines can bring out the creativity storyteller in all of us.
Now is the time for name blaming, the more important the name, the easier it is for the recipient of this blatant lie to believe you. Or, if you can't blame an actual person, then the "take pity on me" routine is another alternative, as whatever happened to make you miss your flight was absolutely out of your control and you were at the mercy of the gods. A good "reason" is just a few words for an excuse that will justify a fault on your part for which you really don't want to suffer the repercussions of the error in your ways. Repercussions, especially where missing your flight is concerned, will normally involve in the payment of money and we all love to hang onto our cash. So, missing a flight requires some ingenuity when coming up with an acceptable and plausible explanation as to how it could happen, without incurring a penalty of some sort.
1. The Cat Peed On Your Boarding Pass
If using this excuse do make sure you say that your cat is the pampered child substitute of your barren neurotic wife (or turn the tables, it belongs to your wimpy husband) which cost a fortune as it is a hairless Sphinx breed and as such, it can't do anything wrong. Ensure to impress the time it took to boot up your laptop and then reprint the boarding pass, considering the printer was out of ink and you had to run to a neighbour's to borrow some. The whole exercise put your meticulous timing out of schedule. I would always blame a cat over a dog as I don't like cats, but feel free to use whatever animal may be capable of destroying a piece of paper that would be wondering around a house. That also goes for how it was destroyed, as it could have been eaten or defecated upon.
2. Traffic Accident
This one will definitely work if you are in a developing country such as Thailand or India because of the number of road accidents that occur every day. Location dependent aside, it is a definite possibility anywhere internationally where there are cars. It doesn't even have to be the actual taxi or car that you were in, it could have been a tragic collision, which occurred right in front of your vehicle. By the time you stopped and performed humanitarian due diligence on the occupants of the wrecked vehicle, you did not consider your flight time as you would have been labeled uncaring of the suffering of your fellow humans.
3. Confusing Airport Terminal Parking
Long term, short term, handicapped, car rental returns, pick up and drop off areas; the array of different lanes leading to each specified area for vehicles totally confused you as you have no sense of direction whatsoever. By the time you found the applicable area for your car, it appeared to be full, so you had to keep on driving around and around trying to find that elusive space which you could legally park in. State that you have never had a parking ticket in your life and you didn't want to start now, as you are such a law-abiding citizen.
4. Blame The Screening Queue
Don't take the flak on yourself; lay the blame back on the airport's lack of attendants at the security screening area. The queues were like gigantic pythons wrapping themselves around the pre-scanning area with no thought to anyone trying to get past. Lay it on a bit more by the fact that there were too many bionic passengers with metal insertions either by way of metal pins in their hips, knees or pace makers (obviously due to catching flights' stress), which held the line up even more.
5. The Terminal Or The Gate Changed At The Last Moment
Only pull out this one if it is true, otherwise claim that you have a touch of Alzheimer’s and you had to keep on looking at your boarding pass to know which gate you had to be at. Elaborate with the fact that you need to wear glasses to read and you kept on forgetting where you had put them. If you say this, please don't have your glasses hanging around your neck.
6. The Boarding Call Wasn't Loud Enough
Impress that you were sitting in the airport and that you had arrived with plenty of time to spare, but that your eighteen-month-old baby daughter is teething and through lack of sleep you fell into a coma induced state of oblivion. This works even better if you are of a certain age, because they may take pity on you for being a "late in life" father/mother. Enhance the explanation with the fact that the earplugs of your iPod were buried in your ears to shut out the deafening screams of hordes of misbehaving children around you, and you inadvertently fell asleep.
7. Bad Premonition Vibes
This is a dicey one along with the "flying" phobia types, but sometimes certain situations call for extreme mitigating circumstances for missing a flight. Explain that since there have been so many plane crashes, flights disappearing or being shot at, your nerves got the better of you. A feeling of "doom" enveloped you, and your partner had to physically carry you into the airport screaming and kicking because you had such bad feelings about the flight. But, and this has to be a very big "but", you are fine now as you had calmed down. Do stress this fact or they won't let you on a plane at all!
You might also enjoy:
Best 5 Reasons To Miss A Flight
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8 Ways To Bring Your Trip To An Untimely End
Gail Palethorpe, a self proclaimed Australian gypsy, is a freelance writer, photographer and eternal traveller. Check out her website Gail Palethorpe Photography and her Shutterstock profile.
