As someone who loves to travel and tries to travel often, I know that things don’t always go according to plan. In fact, sometimes things go wrong (very wrong) and you have to quickly figure out what to do next and hope for the best.

But I would be lying if I said there haven’t been some crazy airport experiences that have made me question (only for a few seconds...minutes...) why I’m trying to put myself on a plane in the first place.

Here’s my most recent: in my quest to fly from New York to Florida to beat the inclement weather heading towards NY, I changed my flight to an earlier one, which actually boarded on time and even starting taxiing on the tarmac. Alas, the plane never took off because the snow fell down heavier than anticipated and they couldn’t keep the runway clear. Long story short, I spent almost 10 hours at the airport, three of which were on an actual plane.

Then there was the time I was trying to fly from Miami to Chile, only to be delayed overnight by 11 hours for a reason I’m still not sure of, which then caused me to miss my connecting flight to northern Chile, which then caused me to arrive at my final destination in the middle of the night.

Oh and the time my flight from Florida to New York was so delayed, it missed LaGuardia Airport’s curfew and had to be diverted to JFK in - say it with me - the middle of the night.

And then there was the time I was flying from London back to New York and I had a very old, very small forgotten pepper spray keychain in my carry-on that somehow went undiscovered by everyone for more than a year but was discovered that lovely night. This resulted in me being pulled off the last flight of that day, questioned about said pepper spray, stuck in Heathrow for hours and then finally rebooked on a flight the next morning. Newsflash: pepper spray is a firearm in the UK. So, that was fun. And as you can see, so many of my airport mishaps involve middle-of-the-night adventures.

All this to say I’ve had some interesting experiences at airports over the years, some of which could have had the power to turn me off of traveling for good, or at least for a very long time.

The vast majority of my airport experiences are perfectly fine, which I know to be the norm while the others are not.

But, I still love travel. I also, generally speaking, still enjoy airports. The vast majority of my airport experiences are perfectly fine, which I know to be the norm while the others are not.

To me, airports always signify new adventures and places unseen. Though some airports can be a hassle to navigate, I often have ways to make the experience more enjoyable (thank you, Global Entry, Priority Pass, my current Clear three-month trial and all the books that have helped me pass the time).

If I want to fly somewhere, I have to deal with airports (no private jets yet, sorry to say). So it means I have to take the good with the bad of travel and ultimately understand that things won’t always go my way but that I shouldn’t let it stop me from seeing the world.

Any airport horror stories you’ve experienced in your travels?