I got stranded at the airport for 48 hours, and it wasn’t so bad.

&#x200B;<br><br>Two weeks ago I was traveling from my home in Spain to my home in the USA. I fly from Madrid to Philadelphia, with a layover in New York.<br><br>The morning of my flight, the pandemic in Spain had been locked down for 6 months, but was just starting to show signs of improvement. It seemed likely that restrictions would be eased soon, so when I went through customs and border patrol in Madrid, I asked the agent about traveling to the US. He said “be prepared for 14 days of quarantine.”<br><br>I laughed. I was only transferring in NYC, I wasn’t going to the US. He was probably just joking.<br><br>I get to NYC, show my printed “ITINERARY” to the attendant at the gate, who waved me through. I think to myself “wow, they really aren’t doing much COVID enforcement here.”<br><br>I get to my connecting gate in NYC, show my printed “ITINERARY” to the next attendant, who waves me through again. Now I think to myself “It wasn’t a joke, they’re right, the pandemic is such a mess that they’re not even checking these printouts anymore!”<br><br>After about an hour, my flight to Philly is called. I show my “ITINERARY” to the attendant again and… “Sorry, you can’t get on this flight. You need to go to the COVID desk.”<br><br>I had seen a sign about the COVID desk, but I was like “yeah that’s not for me, I’m just transferring” and ignored it.<br><br>I go to the COVID desk, and the woman at the desk says “I’m going to have to test you for COVID.”<br><br>What? What does that even mean?<br><br>She directs me to an ATM so I can pay $170. I pay, follow her to the testing center, get my nose squirted with COVID goo, receive my swab. Then she tells me to go to my new gate, which isn’t the gate for my new flight to Philly. It’s a gate for standby passengers.<br><br>I go to the gate for standby passengers, show them my “ITINERARY” and they say “sorry, you can’t go to Philly, you need to go to the COVID desk again.”<br><br>I go to the COVID desk again, and they tell me “You’ve been put on a flight to Chicago.”<br><br>No. Chicago is nowhere near Philly. Chicago is nowhere near New York. Where the fuck am I supposed to go from Chicago?! I ask them if there’s any way I can get to Philadelphia, and they say “you’re on a flight to Chicago, you need to go to the COVID desk.”<br><br>So I go to the gate for standby passengers, and wait for 10 hours. The gate agent doesn’t seem to have any information on my status, and just says “go to the COVID desk.”<br><br>After 10 hours of sitting at the gate for standby passengers, I finally get an email that my new boarding pass is ready. I go to the COVID desk and they give me a new boarding pass, which tells me that my flight from NYC has been cancelled and that I’m now flying from Chicago.<br><br>So I go to my new gate, which is for the flight to Chicago. The gate agent sees my new boarding pass, and says “get on this flight to Chicago.”<br><br>Nope. I said. I want to go to Philadelphia. I don’t want to go to Chicago. I have an itinerary to prove that I’m going to Philadelphia. He just said “you’re on this flight.”<br><br>So I got on the flight to Chicago. 7 hours later I land at O’Hare, and go to the United desk to tell them that I’m not going to Chicago. They have no information on my status. One man at the desk says “you’re stuck in Chicago. You’re going to quarantine.”<br><br>Another guy says “don’t worry, you’ll eventually get on a flight to Philly.”<br><br>A woman said “would you like me to book you a hotel and send you to the quarantine hotel?”<br><br>So I said sure. Then nothing. For the next 18 hours, I had no phone service. No Wi-Fi. Nothing. It was as if I’d vanished.<br><br>18 hours later, I get sent to a hotel. I wake up the next morning, and go to the airport to try again. I go to the United desk and tell them that I still want to go to Philadelphia. They say “oh yeah, your flight’s in 20 minutes. Go to that gate.”<br><br>20 minutes later, I get on a flight from Chicago to Philadelphia. I arrive at Philly, go to my bedroom, and sleep for 24 hours. I was exhausted.<br><br>So in the end I flew from Madrid to NYC, transferred to a flight from NYC to Chicago, then transferred from a flight from Chicago to Philly. All because they wouldn’t let me on my original flight from NYC to Philly.<br><br>Nowhere in this journey did I break any rules. I had negative results on a COVID test. I was trying to get to the city of Philadelphia, through the airport of Philadelphia. I just didn’t have the Philadelphia leg of my itinerary.<br><br>I have never been so frustrated in my life. But in retrospect, I guess it was pretty funny. I got to take two COVID tests, and fly on two different COVID-tested flights. I stayed in a hotel, that I didn’t pay for! And I got two weeks of travel stories out of one night!