These days I’m lucky as I don’t often have to travel on business. On a recent business trip to the states I think I made about every newbie travel mistake possible.
Things didn’t start well as, when I arrived at Gatwick there were no more nearby airport parking spaces in the car parks close to my airport terminal. I ended up taking a space in a car park miles away and had to pay top dollar for the privelige.
This delayed my getting to the checkin desk and I was already a bit late. This didn’t go down well at the check in desk where they told me that I should have arrived an hour earlier. They also told me that I could have checked in online and printed my boarding pass myself before leaving home. Well you live and learn I suppose.
The early start had meant leaving home without eating breakfast so I thought I’d get a bite from one of the many airport restaurants. I couldn’t believe what they were charging for a full English breakfast and if I wasn’t travelling on expenses I wouldn’t have been too happy at paying the extortionate airport prices.
I arrived in Atlanta and immediately headed for one of the car hire providers. It turned out that there were a whole load of conferences in town and most of their more comfortable models had already been hired out. I ended up having to accept a Dodge pickup for the duration of my two day visit. If I’d booked in advance I’d have saved my employers some money and probably got the car that I wanted.
When I returned to Atlanta airport for my homeward journey I omitted to remove my keys from my pocket and had chosen a different belt which has a heavy metal buckle. This resulted in my undergoing no less than three body scans before I successfully passed through the security check.
It wasn’t until I’d boarded the aircraft that I realised that I had lost my PDA, either lost or stolen in the airport. Or it may have been stolen from my pocket. It wasn’t until I got home that I found out that my travel insurance policy didn’t provide cover to lost or stolen PDAs or other electronic gadgets. I wished that I had checked before leaving and taken out a gadget insurance policy.
It’s pretty obvious that I am a little out of practice when it comes to air travel these days. I think I should simply stay put here in the UK.
