We asked readers to share their travel tales of woe. Some repsonded that travel is wonderful and — in so many words – we should all quit griping. Other told of sad, bad days in the air. Here, a few choice snippets. Join the conversation with the good the bad and the ugly–throw in a few travel tips, too.

From Gloria Gardner: “I’ve never slept in an airpot and I’ve never missed a connection. Lucky, yes, but also prepared.” Gardner books nonstops, uses a travel agent, checks her reservation at least several days before traveling and smiles rather than screams. “It makes things less stressful for me and the people around me if I’m pleasant.”

From Terry Srp: “I had a lousy flying experience that showed me how a good crew can make a bad experience tolerable. I became suddenly ill on a flight and the care I was given by the attendats and medical people who were on the same flight was incredible. ”

From Bethany Pearson: “I saw the blip about wanting travel horror stories from readers and boy, do I have a few.” She then proceeded to detail three, including the time a European airline went out of business. “It was the Venice to Paris [leg of our trip] that was horrific…On our morning of departure, we got up and took the water shuttle to the airport at 5:00 am….We looked at the flight status board to find our flight into, but nothing was there. No mention of the flight or the airline. We asked at information, ‘where can we find Volare airlines?’ It seems they went out of business about a month earlier. ‘It was on the news,’ we were told–in Italy, but not the U.S.!”

 From Mark Heywood: “I fly about 40,000 miles a year all on the same airline so I’m considered an ‘elite’ customer. Last winter I took my wife and six employees and their spouses to San Francisco for a convention…Iupgraded the wife and I to first class using miles…On the way back, our flight was canceled and the airline sent the seven couples on seven different ways back to MSP. The airline refused to honor my already redeemed miles for first class and sent us back to MSP in separate middle row seats. To add insult to injury, all my employees were back in MSP long before me. We got in at 10:30 p.m. and had a three hour drive to get home. So the loyal frequent flyer got kicked out of first class and got home at 2 a.m. and his employees all got to MSP before him. No wonder people hate to fly.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under airlines, consumer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.