You’d think that with all these frequent flying, one would get this traveling business down to a T.  Of course one would always be ready for changes along the road, specially during longish trips. I’ve missed flights before, twice actually in my life. But to commit idiotic error such as booking the wrong flight is very annoying! I’m so upset that I don’t feel like discussing it, but I will tell my tale here.

When I found 3 of my friends are going to one of Philippine’s more prestigious festival–Dinagyang in Iloilo City, on a whim I decided to join them. It’s going to be just a weekend. I’m really excited because I love festivals and I’ve never been to Iloilo. It was made sweeter because the plan was to do a day trip to Gimaras, which has been getting raves from travelers. That was 10 days ago.

Last night I gave up sleeping to pack and ensure that I’ll be at the airport before 5 a.m.  My flight is at 5.50 a.m. or so I thought. When I got to the counter I was told that my flight is for the afternoon. I was stunned for a second and then I looked at my ticket, indeed it was 5.50 p.m!  What?? How??  I even highlighted the time with a yellow marker! And I’ve looked at this e-ticket more than a couple of times to confirm my flight time!!

e-ticket

The thing is I was so used to the military time format used by all other airlines. This is the first time I’m flying with Air Philippines actually. I most frequently fly with Cebu Pacific locally and recently with Zest Air. Both of which use military time format. Of course it very clearly stated PM, but it would be helpful if all the airlines have uniform format, no? This is why the traffic light uses colors to represent STOP-SLOWDOWN-GO. Our brains do not read the words but registers what it’s used to.  For sure, I’m not the only person in the world who’ve committed this error? Anyone?  Back me up??

So I came back home to sleep. I awoke around 9 to decide what to do. Certainly I can take the afternoon flight as the grand parade of Dinagyang is tomorrow. But my friends were already in Gimaras and will be staying overnight there. The hotel we booked in Iloilo was forfeited at 10 o’clock. I tried several hotels but as expected were fully booked, not even expensive late holiday offers are available. About 2p.m., PTB friend Marky said he was able to talked to his lovely CS host, Joanne to accommodate me for the night. But by this time, I was depleted of energy and not very much in the festival mood. So I finally decided not to push through with it. Anyway, there are other factors such as my sisters who didn’t want me to go. Oh well, now that I rant about it, I feel a little better. It’s probably not meant to be.

Have you had such tale? Missed Flights? Wrong Booking? Say yes!