Missed!

Oh no, I missed he flight! Despite all my efforts I missed the flight.  To put in into perspective, my usual drill when catching a flight is to pack the morning of the flight.  Does not matter whether it is local or international, for a day trip or a three week trip.  I then just make it to the checkin counter, with minutes to spare.  Then it is fishing out passports, boarding passes and the like and by the time I get into the departure hall I am highly stressed out.

This time though I thought I should avoid all the stress and started out by checking in online, exactly 24 hours before the flight, selecting my seat and booking my meal.  At night I packed my bags and got all my things together and before retiring I had, for the first time, everything ready for departure.  

This morning I made my way to work for a meeting and even managed to leave at the time I planned.  I got to the airport a hour and a half before the flight, checked in my luggage and noticed the time 12:40 on the boarding pass.  Seeing that I had an hour before boarding, I made my way to a fast food place for a coffee and a smoke (and yes I do know).  

And this is where the wheels came off.  I drank some coffee and had a few smokes, looking through my mails and dealing with the few issues that arisen when I looked at my watch and realised it was time to go. I settled the bill and made my way down, through security and down to the waiting area.  When I got to the gate, there were no airline officials in sight. Doors were closed even though I was well within the time sttipulated on the boarding pass. I took another look at my boarding pass and noticed, for the first time, the words "Gate closing time"! 

Now I have been traveling for a number of years, international mostly, but this was the first time that I had ever come across a gate close time on a boarding pass.  Come to think of it there are a number of gates that one has to go through when flying.  There is the gate at the parking, the security gate, which always seems to always have just the right number of gates open to cause a long queue and a delay, and then there is one before boarding the aircraft.  So I would like to know, which wiseguy, decided to put the gate close time when the boarding time is perfectly in order?

Why would I want to know when the gate closes, When what I really want to know when should I be a the gate to facilitate boarding the aircraft?  This is deinitely an idea born in some customer services consultants mind, despite having little or no contact with actual customers, to make the process more efficient and cater for that small percentage of customers who invariably arrive late and make unreasonable demands of the airline.  As a result of this efficiency the rest of us,  about 99.98 % of customers, have to fathom what does the heck does the airline actually mean by gate close time?

But I guess, it only takes one missed flight and a hefty penalty, in the form of a ticket to secure a seat on the next available flight, to learn what gate closed time means.  A rather expensive lesson to learn and one that has no educational accreditation besides the one from the school of life.  

For my next trip I am going to ask the airline for a complete breakdown of the entire ticket to ensure that there is no misunderstanding or misinterpretation of what all those acronyms actually mean and maybe, just maybe, prevent missing the flight.  I must admit though, it is the third time I have misssed a flight to Cape Town ;-)