This was a scary but happy happening when my mother and I went to Russia about 5 years ago.  We were on a stop over in New York.  Coming out of the plane, I checked the departure time posted near the door and it said, 1 hour from now.  Since we were really hungary & wanted real food not airline,  we rushed out to find a restaurant.  Around the corner in the next wing there was a sit down eating place & you could hear the announcements of the NOW boarding Flight #’s.

We were enjoying our food which took a long time to order, when I heard a voice very loudly call out “KAREN!”, like as if they were yelling at me.  It scared me, &  I had a funny feeling something was wrong.  When I looked around it seemed as if the restaurant had  gotten  empty & all the people had left.  So I rushed my mother & I stood up & said, “we have to leave NOW!”The restaurant had the worst service, very slow & it took 10 minutes just to get our bill & another 5min. to pay at the register.

Then we started running back to the gate, but when we reached there it was empty, just the airline ticketers , the door was closed.  I explained that we were supposed to be on the plane and how come it left early?  They said they were looking for 2 passengers.  Then quickly got on the phone to call, that they had found us.  She said that’s your plane, and it was starting out of the gate and proceeding towards the runway when it abruptly stopped and returned back.  The gatedoors swung open, we were rushed down the walkway, the door to the plane opened and we rushed in with door quickly closing.  The plane started back towards the runway as we walked to our seats, it was moving.

It was SO—- embarressing.  Everyone looked up at us as if to say “who are these people!”  Like as if we were some kind of VIP.  My mother and I was so releived as we sat down in our seats.   This was the last flight out of NY heading to Russia, and if we had missed it, we would have had to stay overnite and then try to hook up with the tour group bus  on our own, behind 1 day’s travel.

Later, we found out from the rest in our group, that they announced on the plane , that they  had forgotten some important papers and had to return to the gate.  Thank Goodness for that Guardian Angel that yelled at me and made us run to the plane.  Lucky we were able to plane!  My Mom and I had tears in our eyes when we saw the plane leaving without us.  What’s worst, no one from our group even knew we were MISSING!