Haha, I’ve been to that Loma Linda. On the way to the Toledo airport. It might have been my husband’s and my first date.
If I remember they made a good margarita. Not the best in Toledo though 
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You can understand why the name stuck with me for 46 years. Margaritas are ubiquitous here in San Diego!
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Wow, that sounds pretty unpleasant, @Marilyn ! That would put most off margaritas for a good stretch of time!
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I remember when our kids were pretty young—maybe S was 5 and D was 3 and we were flying to the neighbor islands with S. S decided to be a wise guy and told TSA he had a bomb. We were very very upset with him. TSA recognized that he was being a wise guy and gave him a stern lecture but nothing more. We told him how lucky he was that he didn’t get much worse!
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The bad and ugly. When I was 24, I was on a flight from Chicago to St. Louis in the spring, and a tornado formed in the vicinity mid-flight. The plane started tossing, and the only thing we heard from the cockpit for the next two hours was a loud and immediate, “FLIGHT CREW IN YOUR SEATS. NOW!” The turbulence became so bad, some of the overhead bins opened, and people started screaming when things started flying around. There was nothing the flight attendants could do from their seats to restore order other than to try unsuccessfully to calm everyone. As we found out later, the reason we were in the air so long was ATC was trying to divert all the planes in the area to other airports/altitudes, but there was no smooth air to be found and only so many options for landing. Eventually, our flight was routed back to its original destination, but the pilots never came on again to give us any information. In was sheer panic and chaos. I had never seen so many crying adults.
I became aware of my mortality on that flight. I took the train back to Chicago and didn’t fly again for a long time and then not without a tranquilizer. To this day, I hate flying, thus my response to @sherpa’s kind gesture on the Tell Me Somethin’ Good thread.
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When I was a child, my mom and I once picked up a puppy from a breeder, and flew to my grandmother’s house to deliver this puppy to her (another long story that I won’t go into…)
The airline’s normal policy was that dogs had to fly in cargo. My mother, however, was very good at making up stories. She told the airline that she was a veterinarian traveling with this puppy, the puppy could not travel in cargo for medical reasons, and that she might need to medicate it during the flight, so it had to be near her. She was so persuasive that they actually moved my mother and I, with the puppy, into First Class so that there would be extra space for the puppy.
It turned out that another person seated in our row had overheard my mother’s conversation with the airline check-in people. He introduced himself as soon as we sat down. He said that he was a veterinarian, traveling to a veterinary conference to present some research.
Of course my mother had to chat with this guy about veterinarian stuff for the entire flight. I was used to hearing my mom make up stuff, so I knew to keep quiet and just let her talk. Occasionally I’d smile at the guy and nod or something.
At the end of the flight, the guy said that it had been such a great pleasure to meet and talk to my mother, because he never really thought that a female veterinarian could be as competent as a man, but now she had changed his mind. They exchanged contact information (never actually talked again though).
To this day, I don’t know if the guy was fooled and was being serious, or if my mom had not fooled him at all and he was being snarky 
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Loma Linda’s VERY popular Mexican here but weirdly in 40+ years I’ve never been. It is right by the airport though so I can see that’s where you “landed” 
!
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That is what nightmares are made of! 
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Many years ago - probably sometime in mid nineties, my late mother in law was on a return flight from Sydney. To better set the scene, she was the epitome of a NY Jewish mother. Think the Linda Richman character on SNL. She had lived in Atlanta for about 30 years by that time but was still very much a New Yorker. When I asked her how her flight was,she proceeded to tell me that she had the best flight. She sat next to the most lovely young man on the flight - a real mensch. It turned out that he was Jewish and grew up in Queens too. The man was a musician and they just talked and talked for the entire flight. Then she asked me if I had ever heard of a band called the Ramones. Turned out her new bestie was Joey Ramone. That flight may very well have been the inspiration for “I want to be sedated”
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Early 90s, I was traveling cross country with my 1, 3, and 5 year olds. My dad accompanied me to the gate and even onto the plane, I think, to help carry car seat(s?) We had paper boarding passes. After my dad departed, I was trying to get settled into our seats and the flight attendant came to me and said, I’m sorry, there’s been a mixup and you can’t sit together with your kids. I thought for a moment about how absolutely ridiculous that was and just smiled and said ok. Somehow, they managed to accommodate us.
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I was on a SW flight and for some odd reason they were supposed to give me a free drink coupon. But I didn’t get it. I went to the customer service counter and they handed me 8 of them. I don’t drink alcohol…and I made a 8 new friends on the plane trip…just handing out free drink coupons.
I have no idea why they gave me 8.
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Oh, I remember our 1st ever flight with S—he was 6 months old and we thought we were SO lucky that we were able to get a seat with the bassinet the provided complimentary by UAL. Our S absolutely HATED with a passion that bassinet. He screamed bloody murder any time he was put into it, even if he was sound asleep when we tried to put him in. We finally gave up (much to the relief of the other passengers & flight crew) and just held him or made a bed on the floor of the plane with blankets and jackets & then he was content. Phew! We never tried to get a bassinet again for any other flight. The kids were awesome travelers, from 6 months (except in a bassinet).
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My funny - my dad worked for an International carrier and we always flew standby. In the 70s I distinctly remember a short flight where I sat in a flight attendant’s jump seat and my brother sat on the pilot’s lap in the cockpit! We were probably age 6 and 3. (I was jealous!)
We also had a transatlantic flight where our “seats” were in the bathrooms for take off and landing. Rest of the time we were in the jump seats or in the 747 upper lounge. Ah, the 70s ; )
The ugly (the worst) - when I was flying alone with my D who was age 2 1/2, and we circled the Austin airport for an hour because of storms and she filled 5 airsickness bags.
The scary - loss of flight control following take off from ORD and an immediate emergency landing. Aborted take off from Midway and a 20 minutes stop surrounded by firetrucks while they cooled down the breaks/wheels at the very very end of the runway. (A few more feet and we would have gone through the barrier onto the highway).
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A fairly recent bad - two years ago we were going to Italy to celebrate S22’s HS graduation. We were flying through Montreal and our flight to Milan kept being delayed. Finally, they board us at 1 am - 30 minutes later they tell us the crew has timed out AND we have to reclaim our baggage and go back to the main terminal. As they had stripped out all the seating due to covid, there is nowhere to sit and no hotel rooms are available so we spend the night lying on the hard ground. A complete s- show. We did get to Italy (and had a great time) but it was a rough start. After battling Air Canada for two years we finally got reimbursed for our trouble.
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Meaning if the bins are the newer bigger ones, place baggage as shown on the right side of this image? (Note that Airbus also offers newer bigger bins that airline may choose to install.)
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Seems that common air travel advice is to put stuff you cannot do without in your carry-on bag. So people put their passports / IDs, mobile phone, credit cards, flight and hotel information, essential medication, etc. in their carry-on bags and then panic when they are forced to gate check. (And, in the rare event of an evacuation, they delay the evacuation by getting their bags even though they are not supposed to do that during an evacuation.)
Really, the air travel advice should be to put your most essential items in the pockets of your clothing (there are travel vests and jackets with numerous pockets for this purpose if your regular clothing is insufficient for this purpose). If they do not all fit, put the excess in a personal item that fits under the seat (if you do not need the space of both a personal item and a carry on bag, put the personal item in the carry on bag and remove it if you need to gate check the carry on bag).
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I have several.
The first is related to my on and off again anxiety about flying (I think hormonally based - I actually stopped flying at all for almost 10 years at one point during perimenopause!). Anyway. I volunteered with Operation Smile for a couple of years taking before and after photos (in the OR!) of the cleft palate patients. So I was coming back from a mission in Bolivia and had taken an Ambien so that I could sleep on the flight. When I got to Miami, I had to stop at a customs desk, and the attendant told me that I looked nervous. I just laughed and told him I’d taken an Ambien and was probably a little loopy. He let me pass and gave me instructions about needing to collect my bags to go through customs and I nodded and smiled and moved on to my connecting flight.
The next thing I knew, I was in Boise with my husband at the baggage claim area. I literally blacked out everything in between. Going to the gate, the flight, everything. Apparently I did NOT collect my bags to go thru customs at Miami because my bags never showed up! Luckily, they were delivered a couple of days later. I don’t take Ambien anymore.
The next is another Operation Smile trip. There was nothing especially bad or ugly except the length of my trip home. SIXTY hours from the time I left the city where our mission was located in Kenya until I arrived home in Boise. Because OS paid for the tickets, they were the worst itineraries. I had two eight hour lay overs in London and Chicago. An angel lady woke me up when my plane was boarding in Chicago or it’d have been even longer. I was never so happy to be home.
On the opposite end of the flying spectrum were our flights to adopt our daughters. Our agency chose Singapore airlines for the adoptive family groups to fly to and from China. The flight attendants were so beautiful, kind, helpful … I can’t express how wonderful they were especially on the way home with our youngest who was still having difficulty with the experience after two weeks in China. If she started crying, one of the attendants would be at my side immediately asking what she could do to help. I appreciated the kindness so much! The rest of the flying experience was top notch also.
Finally, a funny story about my husband who drove to the wrong DC airport twice when we worked in DC. He had to frantically drive to the other airport when he discovered his mistakes but made both flights. On one, he left his car at the wrong airport and took a taxi to the other because he didn’t have time to go fetch it and park it again. So when he got home he had to do the same in reverse. OMG. I would have just cried and cancelled the trip!
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A couple of celebrity stories:
When our son was 12, he was flying back alone from a summer camp. When he got off the plane, he told us he talked to a cool guy next to him the whole four-hour flight, and the guy gave him his business card. It was Ozzie Newsome’s, and Ozzie had written on it “Will be a President of the USA.” Our son framed it and has it on his wall. (Sorry for the blur)
DH was on a flight from Detroit to LA and talked to his companionable seatmate the whole way. Only on descent did he ask the man what he did for a living. The musician was Jose Feliciano.
In both cases, the men were genuinely gracious.
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Sounds unreal, but… my husband and I (and others) were flying to the opening of the Clinton Library. As a nerd I had gotten a copy of ‘My Life,’ Bill’s just-released autobiography and was reading (figuring it would be good to be prepared even though I was just a spectator).
My seat-mate turned out to be gentleman who helped write the book. I got to ask dumb questions like “How did he remember all those details from his time in office?” (apparently they met regularly during the presidency to review notes etc.)
During the opening got to hear a beautiful presentation from the first Pres. Bush and Clinton describing how they both appreciated differing political perspectives - knowing they came from the same impulse to make things better
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Many years ago, when DH and I were newly married, we both decided to work in Alaska for the summer. DH is a musician. He and his band got a gig playing in what is euphemistically termed a “club”. Yep, aka a bar band.
As a health care provider, I took a 12 week travel job at Ketchikan General Hospital. They employ a lot of summer staff because the population in that area (and thus the patient load) expands about tenfold in the summer with loggers, fishermen, tourists.
The challenge was that our jobs were not geographically together. So as part of my travel contract, I was able to negotiate weekend travel to and from my husband on Prince of Wales Island. Every Friday afternoon I would hop in a float plane with just me and the pilot and some mail/cargo and fly over to Craig, AK. We would land right near the dock in front of the band house. And my DH would come out and help tie us up to the dock.
Such an adventurous summer. The pilots were so interesting to talk to, and of course the scenery was amazing.
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