Overbooked

Well, there you go... I never thought it would happen to me but it did.

My friend and I were among the last to check in for our flight to Singapore via Cebu Pacific. We didn't come late, but unfortunately, most of our co-passengers showed up much earlier. We were at the tail end of the queue and by the time we were checking in, check-in guy told us that we might not get on the plane. Why? Because they were overbooked by 10%.

I only had one hour of sleep, it was 4:45 a.m. and the guy is telling me we won't be able to leave until 8:30 p.m. that day. Nothing was sinking in.

"Every cloud has a silver lining" says an adage. In our case, the silver lining was a free round trip ticket with either the same route (i.e., Singapore) or a route with an equal or lower value (i.e., HK, KL or Macau). In all due fairness, the Cebu Pacific ground crew was very nice and accommodating. Still, I just couldn't shake off the thought that I wasted one whole day even though I was getting a free ticket in exchange.

Good thing my friend and I weren't executives who had a very important meeting to attend that morning in Singapore. We would have already lost a client by then.

Next time, we'll just have to get to the airport really, really early. Unless we want to get another free round trip ticket...