Whitney here – While Marilyn is sailing around Alaska, I’m taking over her blog for the week!

Before I began working in this industry, I rarely traveled by plane.  I had a few international trips under my belt – a family trip to Japan when I was 13, Paris and London on a high school trip when I was 17.  Even still, introducing travel as part of my career was new and exciting.  Being the sentimental person that I am, I started a few collections related to travel knickknacks that I would stash away after each trip.  

I began saving boarding passes about 7 years ago when I started my first job with a meeting and event planning company out of Denver.  This wasn’t necessarily because of my excitement for flying… I actually wasn’t a huge fan of flying back then.  At first, it was more of a simple collection of memories.  I moved away from California for the first time in my life, and it was a new chapter for me.  Much like someone would save a movie ticket from a first date, I saved the boarding pass from my first visit back home.  And so it began.  

I’m not one to give up easily, so as I started traveling more, my collection grew.  I kept at it until it became second nature… get home, unpack the suitcase… dirty clothes in the hamper… boarding passes in “the bag”…. I’m sure my original intent was to do something with them.  A scrapbook maybe, or some sort of art project when creativity struck… but alas, it hasn’t yet.

When my husband and I returned from our long-awaited, much-needed vacation to Peru last week, I went to put the boarding passes in their rightful home, and curiosity got to me.  I decided to dump “the bag” and organize the many scraps of paper in different colors and sizes.  Maybe creativity would strike in the process?

So, figures first, here’s what I had stashed away…

# of years: 7
# of boarding passes: 118
# of airports visited: 52
# of countries (visited or connected through): 24
# of US cities: 15
Row most frequented: 9, 11 times
Airline flown most: United, 39 times (62 Star Alliance flights total)

As I sat there going through each document, memories started flooding back…

 

The first one that caught my eye was a United boarding pass, dated March 27, 2017, MXP (Milan) -EWR (Newark).  I was traveling back from a site inspection to Milan and Lake Como for an upcoming incentive trip in October.

On the way over, we had to do an emergency medical landing when there was not a single medical personnel on a full flight of about 370 people.  We were about an hour off the Canadian coast over the Atlantic when we had to turn around, fly through heavy snow and land in Gander, Newfoundland for about 2 hours.  Two different people had to be taken off for different reasons, and thankfully they got to the hospital and were OK.

We were about 4 hours behind, but we finally got to Milan and I had a wonderful time exploring the two destinations.

On the return trip, exhausted and ready to be back in my own bed, I was flying the reverse route from Milan through Newark, to LAX. The medical landing well out of my mind at this point, we boarded the flight and started taxiing to the runway.  Whenever I get on a plane, I immediately put on my noise-cancelling headphones and go into my own world.  We were taxiing pretty slow, but I didn’t notice anything abnormal until we had been stopped for about 10 minutes.

The pilot came on the speaker and said something along the lines of…

“Well folks, you might have noticed the left engine hasn’t been running.”  (I didn’t.)  “We’re going to follow procedure and shut down the electric system of the plane, restart it and see if we can get both engines up and running.  If it starts up, we’ll be on our way to Newark.  If not, we’ll be on our way back to the gate for some maintenance.” (great.)

I took my headphones off and started paying attention to all the noises I usually blank-out.  Part of me wanted so badly to just get home as soon as possible.  The other part was thinking… well, even if the engine starts… it was still glitching before we even started flying!

The system started back up and both engines started roaring.  The pilot came back on and announced we were good to go, and off we went! Phew! Crisis averted!

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The next boarding pass I noticed was one dated September 28, 2016, on United, EZE (Buenos Aires) to IAH (Houston), row 21L.  A comfortable Economy Plus window seat on a 3-4-3 Boeing 777-300ER for the 10-ish hour flight.  The notable thing about this pass is that I never actually used it to board a plane.

I was flying home after a successful program in Buenos Aires.  This was my first time traveling with this particular client, and I had just said my goodbyes to everyone who boarded a Delta flight set to depart an hour prior to mine.  I was hoping and praying their flight would have no delays after their rough trip from the states on the inbound flight.  They were delayed something like 12 hours in Atlanta and missed a whole day of their already short time in Argentina.

Well, my prayers worked… and they got home on time with no more delays!

Meanwhile, down the terminal at gate 14, the gate agents began to announce the boarding for my flight, United 818.  We all waited in our respective group lines to be invited to scan our boarding passes and board the plane.  Fifteen minutes later, they announced a fifteen-minute delay.  Thirty minutes after that, another fifteen-minute delay.  This didn’t bode well, so I got on the phone with my team back home and tried to see what the hold up was or what my alternate options were if it came to that.  Mind you, this was a full flight with about 370 people to re-accommodate if anything were to happen.  Turns out there was a mechanical failure, and after the third delay of an hour, they announced that the flight was canceled, and they would put everyone up for the night until alternate plans could be made.  United arranged roundtrip airport transportation, a nice hotel, dinner, breakfast then lunch, and compensated everyone with either cash or 10,000 miles.

They ended up flying another plane over to accommodate the number of people stranded in Buenos Aires, however that flight wasn’t leaving until very very late the next day.  Because my amazing team back home was already on top of it, they were able to secure me the last seat on the same United flight 818 (next day, different plane of course) which got me home sooner than expected.  Of course, the last seat wasn’t the comfy window seat I was planning to lean against for a nice 10-hour nap, but I did end up between two very nice men who happened to work as engineers for the same oil and gas company my mother worked for.  Small world!

Some pictures from the wonderful time spent in Buenos Aires and La Bamba Estancia:

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The last boarding pass I’ll mention is one dated November 20, 2015 on Swiss from GVA (Geneva) to PRG (Prague).  This is just a quick 1 hour flight, so why is this one notable?

Well, it was a big oopsie on my part that led me to Geneva in the first place.  I was attending a yearly 3-day conference called IBTM in Barcelona, Spain.  In our industry, there are a few of these events every year that bring planners and suppliers together from all across the world.  These face-to-face meetings are very beneficial for us planners as they provide an environment for us to meet with current business partners and well as meet new contacts and learn new information about future meetings and incentives.  I try to go to at least one a year to stay up-to-date on what’s going on in the world.

Since traveling to Europe for these shows from the US West Coast is quite the trek, there is typically a pre or post-trip included for planners by the company sponsoring them to attend the show.  This time, I scheduled my own independent post-trip to do a river cruise from Budapest, with a stop in Prague beforehand.  Because I was all by myself, I invited my mom to travel along with me as my guest.  The plan was to meet in Prague after the show ended in Barcelona, spend 3 nights there, then travel by train to Budapest before the start of the Christmas Market themed cruise down the Danube.

Well, here’s the oopsie – I missed my flight from Barcelona to Prague.  Since this isn’t a popular route, and there were only 2 direct flights a day, I missed the only chance I had to get there that evening.  Problem was, my mom was already en route to Prague.

I looked into every option… connecting flights?  Yes, available on KLM, Alitalia, Air France…. but all of them were over $600 for a one-way ticket, and they would get me in the next evening.  I was not about to leave my mom alone for that long and miss out on a full day exploring Prague!

What about a train?  Definitely not. That would take about 1 day and 4 hours.

I started looking for flights from nearby cities.  Maybe I could take a train from Barcelona to Madrid? Paris? Leon? Geneva?  I was getting warmer…

The train + flight combo didn’t work, BUT there was an 8:20 am flight out of Geneva the next morning that would get me there much earlier than any other idea I’d thought of thus far.  My only option was to rent a car and make the 7 1/2 hour drive from Barcelona to Geneva, stay overnight then hop on the early flight to my original destination.

Thankfully, my mom had a layover in Paris, so I was able to get ahold of her while she was waiting for her connecting flight.  She was able to reserve a seat for me on Swiss flight 1472 while I was making my way across southwest France in my brand-new bright blue Hyundai Elantra.  Because of her help, plan B was set!

The drive turned out to be one of my favorite travel memories of all time.  The scenery was beautiful, I knew just enough high school French to purchase gas and road trip snacks along the way and I had the day to myself to relax and unwind after a busy 3-days on the IBTM show floor.  Unfortunately, it got dark by the time I got closer to Switzerland, so I missed out on the mountain scenery.

When I arrived in Geneva around 10:30 pm, I was able to get a – for lack of a better word – interesting room at a hotel I will not mention for the low low price of €150.  The walls were thin, and the door’s safety latch had been ripped off.  I didn’t sleep much that night…

Bright and early, I got to the airport, returned my trusty Elantra and made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.  My mom and I were exploring Prague in no time!

Images from our time in Prague, Budapest and Vienna:

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I have had so many amazing travel memories in the past 7 years, and I feel so grateful to share these experiences with an amazing team of people by my side!