What’s the worst travel experience you’ve ever had?
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WordPress has returned to its apparent obsession with travel. Yesterday, it asked for my best travel advice. Today, it wants to know about my worst travel experience. Considering how little traveling I’ve actually done, you might think I’d have trouble answering that question. Fortunately, the airline industry came through for me more than 40 years ago.
I recently wrote about the longest trip I’ve ever taken, a journey to Israel and London when I had just turned 18. My mother and stepfather were leading a tour of the Holy Land, and I was fortunate enough to go along. It was an extraordinary experience, and one I’ve never forgotten. But the most memorable moment of the trip wasn’t in Israel or England. It happened after we’d returned to the United States.
We landed at Washington Dulles International Airport, where one of those enormous mobile lounges came out to meet our airplane. For those unfamiliar with the contraptions, imagine an airport terminal on wheels that pulls up alongside an aircraft to collect passengers. They’re a clever idea, provided the driver remembers that the airplane is supposed to remain in one piece.
Ours apparently forgot.
Somehow, the mobile lounge damaged the airplane door. I don’t remember exactly what broke, but I do remember that the door needed some fairly creative mechanical persuasion before it would close again. Now, I’m not an aircraft mechanic, but I would have thought that damaging a commercial airliner’s door might be sufficient reason to take the aircraft out of service.
Clearly, I was mistaken.
After somebody managed to jimmy the door back into place, the airline decided everything was fine. Well, almost everything. As an added precaution, they stretched caution tape across several seats nearest the damaged door. Presumably, this was to prevent passengers from sitting in the area most likely to become an unscheduled exit.
I’m sure there was some perfectly sound engineering explanation for why the airplane was safe to fly. Unfortunately, nobody shared it with the passengers, who had just watched someone wrestle a damaged door back into place.
So off we went, bound for Tampa.
For the next 2½ hours, practically everyone in our group kept one eye on that door. We’d just flown thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean without incident, but somehow the relatively short flight from Washington to Tampa had become the most nerve-racking part of the entire journey.
I suppose the good news was that we were flying south. Had the door actually come off, at least we wouldn’t have been exposed to the freezing temperatures over the North Atlantic. I’m not sure that would have been much consolation at 30,000 feet, but sometimes you have to look for the positives.
Obviously, we made it home safely. I have no idea whether the airplane was perfectly airworthy or whether we were simply fortunate. But I do know that I’ve never been so happy to see an airplane land.
So there’s my worst travel experience, WordPress. I survived a trip to a country where soldiers carried rifles on the streets, only to find myself staring nervously at a door held shut by what appeared to be the aviation equivalent of wishful thinking.
And that brings me to one final piece of travel advice: If the airline puts caution tape inside the passenger cabin, you might want to ask a few questions before takeoff.
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Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.
