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When good travel plans go bad at the airport

by Sharron Livingston
Airport car park

Murphy’s law states that if something can go wrong, it will. Sure we put in contingency plans and for the most part everything works. But not always. Sometimes a set of circumstances converge at the same time to challenge you best endeavours.

Today I was travelling to Madrid and wanted to do so in the most leisurely way I could.

So, I booked my parking at Luton in advance, in the short term car park, close to the airport so as to save time on transfers. I prepared just one carry-on bag with the bare essentials all within security limit, so I could whizz in and out of the airports,

My check-list was complete. Here’s what happened.

I got to the car park, and there were no spaces. I ended up driving around several times with other increasingly irate drivers all search of a slither of land in which to park the car – but to no avaiI. I called Holiday Extras (the providers). They were apologetic and told me to use a disabled space. OK fine, but that took over 30 minutes of valuable time I could have spent shopping for Duty Free!

Still with only a carry-on I could speed my way to security but once there I was met with horrendous queues. Why oh why did we have queue when there were 11 security scanners – they only used three. Fellow queuers complained into their phones and rolled their eyes for 40 boring, agitating minutes until we passed through.

Finally, with only a handful of minutes left to inspect the shops, I got to the departure gate in a timely fashion to board the easyJet flight. However this flight was full and some guy approaches me and said “sorry love your bag is going in the hold as there is no more cabin space left.” So I still had to wait at Madrid airport for my bag.

The best laid plans….

Booking.com

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