Did I ever tell you about how I missed my return flight three weeks ago during my trip to D.C.? Well, I'll go ahead and warn you that I'm probably turning a short story into a long one, but, here it is anyway.
My flight Saturday was scheduled to depart from Washington-Reagan National Airport at 1:40, so in the morning my friend Daniel and I mostly just walked around D.C. Daniel was nice enough to accompany me to places he'd no doubt already been to before, so we went to the Air and Space Museum and the National Gallery of Art, then walked down toward the Capitol building, stopping at the arboretum along the way. By the time we left the Capitol, it was starting to get close to noon, but we got a little caught up in our sightseeing: we stopped briefly at the Supreme Court (closed that day) and then we couldn't resist a quick visit to the Library of Congress. We were disappointed when we found out that the Library of Congress's Reading Room was closed, but by that time we needed to go, anyway.
So by the time we got to the South Capitol metro stop, I was getting a little nervous about being able to check in on time. "How long does it take to get to the airport? Am I going to make it on time?" I asked Daniel. "We'll see," he said smoothly, though I'm sure he was worried, too.
While we waited for the train to arrive, I pored over the computer printout of my flight information. Delta recommends a minimum check-in time of 30 minutes for domestic flights, it read, and several lines later, Domestic flights close 15 minutes before departure. So we figured I'd be okay if I checked in somewhere near half an hour before departure. "You'll just have to run once you get off the train," Daniel advised. "I can do that," I nodded back.
Once the train arrived there was nothing to do but wait. Daniel and I sat in relative quiet as the train went through the blue line stations: Federal Center, L'Enfant Plaza, Smithsonian, Metro Center -- a route that I'd probably ridden several times in the past few days, except those times I hadn't been in a rush to get to my destination. At each stop I hoped that there wouldn't be a bunch of tourists waiting to get on the train, and every time a train door closed and then bounced back open again to let straggling passengers in, I'd wince silently. When we reached Daniel's stop, I told him I'd give him a call to let him know if I made it. "I'm sure I'll be fine, though," I added.
"Take pictures of Weezer tonight," he said back optimistically as he exited the train.
Finally, the train reached the airport. I dashed off and ran down the elevator and moving sidewalk, and luckily a Delta check-in kiosk greeted me right when I went through some sliding doors. 1:13, my watch said, just a little less than half an hour before my departure time. I sighed with relief as I punched in my skymiles number into the kiosk.
But then the kiosk displayed, "It is too late to check-in for your flight." And so... I started to panic. Several people waiting in line were very nice about letting me get in front of them when I explained that I was late for my flight, restoring my faith in nice people but not doing much to calm me down. After what I'm sure was a harried and rather petulant exchange with the Delta attendant at the desk ("But it says here that the flight doesn't close until 15 minutes before departure!" "That's when the gate closes; you have to get to the gate before then!"), she told me and another man with three kids (who was getting on the same flight as me) that she couldn't do anything at this point, and that we'd just have to see if we could take a later flight.
As we left the desk, I asked the man (to whom I had somewhat latched on for guidance) what he was going to do. "I'm just going to go home and call Delta to get a flight for another day," he said. "I was here 30 minutes before and the kiosk still didn't let me check in." So he walked back toward the metro station with his three kids, and I... wandered into the airport, feeling pretty lost.
At that point I called Alan -- Alan instead of my parents, I guess, because my parents weren't really all that informed about my D.C. trip and because I felt that Alan might react to the news of my missed flight a little more calmly than say, my sister or my mom. I peppered him with questions, trying to keep my voice from sounding hysterical: "What do I do? Do I need to talk to an agent or can I just change my flight through a kiosk? Will they charge me? Waahh I feel so stupid!" (To which his answers were: calm down, you probably need to talk to an agent to change your flight, I don't know if they'll charge you, and don't worry, it happens.)
Anyway, the rest of the story is pretty underwhelming. For the next 20 or 30 minutes, I ran around the airport, trying to get my bearings. I stood in a long line upstairs listening to passengers complaining about how awful Delta was and having to defend my place in line to the snobby lady in front of me, who said upon noticing me, "The line starts back there," before I told her, "No, I've been in line the whole time" and THEN proceeded to let some woman she knew CUT in front of me, that bitch!... before realizing that I was in the line for international flights. So then I went outside, where they told me something about how my flight was late and that I could still get on it, so I went back inside to try and get someone to help me, but since there were 100 other passengers trying to get the Delta people's attentions, I tried the kiosks again. To my mild suprise, the kiosk gave me four options for later flights -- two options that charged a $25 fee and two with no charge, joy! -- so I was able to get on another flight for 3 p.m. that arrived in Atlanta at 6:45 with a layover in Columbus, OH, without having to pay extra. Somewhere in those 20 minutes I also called Daniel at least twice, but then hung up before the phone had a chance to ring because I figured it would be pretty inconsiderate to call him before I even tried to resolve the situation on my own and have him worry about me for nothing.
After the kiosk printed out my boarding passes for my new flight, I headed toward the gate, now with time to spare. On the way down, I showed my passes to another harried-looking flight attendant -- who responded to my initial timid question of "Can I ask you something?" with "I don't know, what's your question?" -- just to double-checked with her if I was good to go; I guess I was still a little surprised that my flight change ended up being so painless. "Yes, you're fine," she answered much more nicely -- relieved, I think, that she didn't have to field a complaint from one of the international passengers tired of waiting in line.
Later I called Alan to tell him that everything was okay, and then answered a call from Daniel, who immediately asked in an expecting-the-worst kind of way, "Did you miss your flight?" I told him yes but then quickly followed it by saying that I'd gotten another flight and that, don't worry, it would get me back to Atlanta in time for Weezer.
On the plane home I thought several times about how flustered I'd been while handling the situation, and how it reminded me of when I lost my keys last summer. When I lost my keys, I was on campus (and living off campus at the time) and my cellphone had died (so I couldn't remember anyone's phone numbers). This time, I had my cellphone... though I was in an unfamiliar city, so maybe that makes missing my flight kind of comparable to losing my keys. Or maybe not. In any event, I am now wiser with the knowledge that it's not the end of the world if you miss your flight, and that even though Delta says the "recommended check-in time" for your flight is half an hour, they really mean "mandatory check-in time or else you won't be able to get your boarding pass." And now I can also say that I've flown alone, though not without invisibly blushing a little at the fact that I wasn't able to make it through my first solo round trip on an airplane without any mishaps. ;)