Wrong Flight!
1996.10.29
We flew from Narita airport in Japan to JFK airport in New York and took a taxi to La Guardia airport as usual. Then, we took a domestic flight and arrived at Manchester airport in New Hampshire (at least we thought so). Although Mr. Kumabe and Mr. Tanabe said that the appearance of this airport seemed different, I didn’t care about it and I didn’t pay it any attention. We went to the rent-a-car counter and showed our reservation certificate to the rent-a-car company clerk, but she said, "This reservation is for Manchester airport." I did not understand what she said and asked her “This is Manchester airport, right?” Then she said, "This is Rochester airport”. Although I could not easily believe what she said, the structure of the airport was a little different from Manchester airport. I asked her "Please inform your Manchester airport counter that we will be late.” and we, all four of us, ran up to the Delta Airlines counter located on the second floor to get flight tickets to Manchester airport.
I asked a female Delta Airlines employee, who was a little fat, “Isn’t this airport Manchester, not Rochester?” showing the boarding pass to Manchester airport. She understood the situation at once and said “you should go to the 1A counter immediately. Run! Run!”I thought the airplane we took would return to La Guardia airport. All of us ran.
A female Delta Airlines employee, who was behind the 1A counter, was skinny and somewhat beautiful. I asked her “Please let us get on board.”but because she did not know the situation, she just said “you cannot get on board without a boarding pass” which is very true. Departure time was getting close, so I became impatient, but I explained our situation briefly to her. She repeated “No” and I repeated “Yes”twice. I said "This is the fault of Delta Airlines. We showed our boarding pass when we boarded.”, Then she called the original counter (I guess) and we were allowed to board. She said "It was the wrong flight". “Wrong Flight”sounds like we made the error, but it was actually their mistake also. I asked her “Don’t you have to issue us boarding passes?” but she said “Go”. There was the same steward inside the propeller plane, about the same as the previous 30-person plane we had taken. Since there was still a problem if there were no flights to Manchester airport, even if we managed to return to La Guardia airport, I asked the steward if there was such a flight available and he said “There is a flight from La Guardia airport to Manchester airport departing at 1715, so you are OK."
Before boarding the wrong flight, we waited in the La Guardia airport waiting room. I slept deeply at that time because I was not able to sleep at all on the international flight to New York. Since Mr. Tanabe said that he heard the announcement of "to Manchester" 10 minutes before 1355, which was the departure time for Manchester airport, I went to the gate half asleep. The female Delta Airlines employee, who was at the end of the ramp, said (I just heard) "to Manchester", and I showed my boarding pass to her and showed it two more times while I boarded the airplane, once when I boarded and once when I found that someone was sitting in my seat and the seat number of my boarding pass was a duplicate. When I showed the duplicate boarding pass to the steward, he said that I could sit in any vacant seat. Both the flight to Manchester airport and the flight to Rochester airport were the same airline, same gate, and a close departure time.
Soon after we returned to La Guardia airport, we went to the Delta Airline’s counter to get on board the flight to Manchester without a flight ticket, but nobody knew our tragic story and I had to explain our situation yet again to another person who was twice as obstinate as the earlier woman. I became a little angry and repeated “It’s your fault!” loudly and he said “Please calm down.” holding his forefinger to his mouth. We could board the flight to Manchester airport after all. Well, I think that only a very few people have flown 4 times in one day, including an international flight. I should have been a frequent flier member of Delta Airlines.
Several years later, when I boarded a flight from La Guardia airport to Manchester airport alone, an American man asked me "Does this flight go to Rochester?" .