It's once again the month of May, and it had me thinking about a year ago when I traveled to Korea. It was a wonderful trip of a lifetime and you should definitely check out the photos here.
While reminiscing about the trip I was reminded of the hilarious incident we had in catching the flight back to America. There were three of us on the trip and yet somehow we all managed to misinterpret the flight time. It was definitely not a good showing for the male section of the species.
For whatever reason, the flight time were shown using military time. Our flight was printed at 20:00 hours which simple math equates to 8:00pm in the evening. We like to think of ourselves as persons of intelligence but we completely miscalculated and thought the flight was 10:00pm.
With that in mind we naturally got to the airport a bit before 8pm. Upon looking at the giant departure board and not finding our flight I double-checked the reservation and realize to horror the huge mistake. We made a dash for Korean Air counter but it was too late: not enough time remained to get us through customs and security.
Even under such misfortune due to self stupidity we lucked out: we got to the check-in counter before the airplane left the ground, which meant we were able to rebook to the next available flight at no extra cost. Had the flight already taken off we would've squandered the plane ticket and had to then pay again for the next one.
So apart from a slightly wounded pride and the costs of an extra night of hotel (and a very angry girlfriend for my friend), it was a good learning episode and I doubt any of us will ever misread a departure time ever again.