I was wandering back through some past Reader Poll questions and I found one that I missed. It was, "Have you ever missed a flight?"

Well, yes. I probably don't have a world record, but I've missed quite a few. There is a reason for it. My daughter works for a major airline and that gives me something called "Parent Passes." No, they aren't free, but they are darned cheap, so I can fly a lot without going to the poorhouse.

The trouble is that I have to fly space available and if there is no space available, I get to wave goodbye from the terminal while the plane takes off. There is always another plane, but not always anytime soon. The wait can be hours or days. This situation has always appealed to my sense of adventure, so I have space availabled all over the place. I missed half a dozen flights out of Miami in one day and about the same number out of Kansas City over a two day period. I've been stuck in the Bahamas, California, Hawaii, Boston, Norfork, Atlanta . . . the list goes on and on.

Once I was on a commuter plane bound from Atlanta to Knoxville, the engines were running and the door was closed and they bounced me off so a "revenue" passenger could have my seat. Two hours later, I was on my way.

One time I got invited to attend a Grand Prix race in Miami. I went to the airport and learned that the last seat had just been sold. The next plane was all sold out and the only one with an available seats would get me to Miami after the checkered flag waved. I went home.

One nice little wrinkle to this "space available" stuff is that sometimes the empty seat is in first class. I just loooove being pampered.
Howard