I’ve never missed a flight in my life. Never. I’ve had a few times where I had to run to a plane. A few times where I had to yell at security to let me through so I’d have time to board. And once at Heathrow where I had to skip the entire line just to have a chance at making the flight. Each time I managed to make it on the plane in time to catch the security brief and sit down before we pushed back.
Until this trip.
Flying out of Dushanbe is always a gamble. Add FlyDubai and a snowstorm and we were lucky to even make it out. They had to de-ice the plane, twice. Then since we left late we had to circle the Dubai airport a few times before we were cleared to land. I assume. One thing I miss about American carriers is they keep you totally informed of what’s going on. International carriers, not so much.
Once we landed we had to go through customs. The tricky thing about flying through Dubai is changing terminals. When I did it going home in August I had one hour and 30 minutes and I made it no problem. This time we flew in at a busier time and there seemed to be less people working so it took twice as long as usual.
Then, there was an almost lost bag. Somehow my suitcase ended up at departures instead of the conveyor belt with all the other arrival bags. And I know what you’re thinking “why didn’t your bags just get forwarded all the way through to Sydney?” Well, because not only were we changing terminals, we were also changing airlines.
Once we located the bag, we ran to a taxi and confidently said “Terminal 1 please!” Only to find out once we arrived that all Emirates flights leave from Terminal 3….
At that point it was all over. Yes there were 40 minutes until our flight was set to roll back but there was no way we would make it. Defeated, we trudged over to ticketing and re-booked ourselves on the same flight the following day.
That left us with approximately 24 hours in Dubai. And let me tell you, there are far worse places to be stuck for a day.
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