Today we’re going to be talking about getting stranded in the airport. Are you guys ready to make every day an adventure? Have you guys seen the movie The Terminal? It’s the one with Tom Hanks when he literally becomes like no man’s land because his country goes into some war.
He can’t go anywhere, and he’s stuck in the terminal, in the airport terminal, literally. I don’t remember for how long. It was for months. So on our recent trip to Mexico, we ended up getting stuck in Mexico City Airport. And the reason why is because our airline I don’t want a bad mouthier airline because every airline does this.
So this could happen to anybody who overbooked their flights. I mean, literally, 80% of the people that were standing around us were overbooked on that flight. Regardless, we were given a night in the hotel, which was literally attached to the airport. But because I had a presentation the next day, I couldn’t fly out with my family, which was put on a flight the following day. I had to stay for two full days, which the airline totally paid for in the airport.
And I literally saw scenes of the terminal. First of all, gratefully. The airport in Mexico City was quite large, so I was able to walk around. We were put into Camino Real, which is a nice airport. I mean, a nice hotel.
It wasn’t super luxurious, but I was able to enjoy downtime. At this point, I was already tired from traveling, so I kind of enjoyed just hanging out in the hotel and getting a little bit of a glimpse of airport life. First of all, one thing that I spotted with Mexico City airport, which really was an interesting and inspiring thing. They really catered to hiring disability workers. It was amazing.
I would say that almost 30%. And at this point, I could tell you the amount because I walked that airport for literally 50 hours all around because I had to deal with so many issues. So I had to go everywhere. I was able to see pretty much every Department that they hired a lot of people who were handicapped and in wheelchairs, and they were treated equally. And it was really fantastic.
That’s something that totally is just an interesting thing because I haven’t seen that, to be honest. The only place that I’ve actually seen it was in Disney World. Also, the airline that we got overbooked with gives you okay, so this is something that’s important because you have to speak up for yourself. They give you vouchers. First of all, they gave us hotel vouchers.
They took care of us. They gave us three rooms. There were five of us. So we lived it up in the hotel, and then they gave us vouchers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that we were going to be there. But the clincher was they only gave us vouchers for one restaurant.
I don’t know if the airline owns that restaurant chain or if they have a deal with them. Irrelevant. Totally pointless but the thing was they gave us a voucher for 150 per meal per person. They work with this restaurant. When I entered that restaurant there was nothing in there that was cheaper than 225 pesos.
Now I don’t know how many people because there was like a good 30 other people that were also over booked in the same boat as us who got the exact same deal who actually went to the airline and they’re like no this is not going to work. Well, I did I fought for us and they gave us 250 pesos per person which was plenty to have a decent meal and even a drink so you need to stand up and talk if you see that there is something that is not working because it was 100% the fault of the airline there is no reason that I should be spending extra money and on top of that I was spending extra money because my dogs were in daycare I had to spend money on that so there were things that I was paying extra for on top of the fact that I was sitting in their hotel room and a lot of people have worked there are things to do. So anyway it was just interesting to see that if you stand up for things you could avoid being taken advantage of. However, it was fascinating just to see and kind of live a day in the life of the terminal right?
You start to really get the hang of it and the exercises I was doing were inside the airport.
Pretty much everything revolves around the airport or the hotel I love to know. Have you guys ever been stuck in the airport and lived for a moment in the terminal? Let me know and if you enjoyed this episode Please leave me a review and share it with your friends and if you want more cool ideas go to travelexperta.com and remember to make every day an adventure.
