Don't Miss Your Flight

It was on a fall day not too long ago when I was about ready to make a trip from Dulles in Washington DC to Heathrow airport in London. I was flying on one carrier from Dulles to JFK and then another on the second leg to Heathrow. Since I got to the airport early I decided to walk around to keep myself occupied and then I went down to the gate about an hour before takeoff and proceeded to fall asleep right there at the gate. When I finally woke up everyone was gone and the plane was still sitting at the gate. They wouldn't leave me on the plane because they had already closed the doors. I began to panic.

While standing in line at the customer service desk I started to notice a common thread among all of the people that were being helped, they were all irate and were not getting anywhere. I decided to take a different course and to be as nice as I possibly could. Let me tell you something, it worked better than I ever thought it could.

At first they were saying that I would have to pay an additional $1,100 to get to Heathrow and they weren't flexible because it was an international flight. Well I smooth talked to the customer service rep until she got me on a second flight (standby) to JFK. Then it was up to the other airline to help me get the rest of the way. I thought there wasn't a chance, but by being calm and nice and asking the person behind the desk for a little leniency I ended up getting on a flight that was only 4 hours behind my original flight… for free. The moral of the story is you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar, especially in the airport.

SouthCarolinaAirports
South Carolina Airports