Where the Bloody Hell are You?

I have walked through dozens of airports, domestic and international, for countless flights in countless countries and one thing has always amazed me and puzzled me. Where the #%@& are the passengers called at the last minute, holding up flights all over the world? You've all heard the broadcasts looking for passenger Chin or family Smith or party of three Yankovich. I'm not talking about people not getting to the airport on time because of traffic, floods and excuses too many to count. I'm talking about people who have checked in, gone through customs if it involves international flights and prior to this, actually decided to purchase an airline ticket and made their way to an airport on time.

Not inconsequential decisions for anyone and certainly decisions you would think to be backed by an intention of action, like getting on the bloody plane already! Are you getting my feelings of frustration?

I read and research aplenty but I never read or hear about heart attacks striking people down before they get on a plane. I never hear about people missing their flight because they had to have airport sex as the toilets onboard were too small to join the "mile high club". There are no accounts of food poisoning from the fast food outlets, nor is there AA information on people falling off the wagon and becoming so drunk they can't find their way out of the bar. The scenarios seem endless if extrapolated to the N th degree of ridiculousness but surely the mystery has answers.

Okay people have last minute panic attacks if they are uneasy flyers and certainly there are the occasional family crisis and last minute illnesses that occur but the percentage of those occurrences are so small in comparison to the number of airport announcements that the mystery remains. As the Lara Bingle ad famously asked, "where the bloody hell are you"? Is there a worldwide conspiracy of alien abduction at airports, sorry getting back to that ridiculous stage because my comprehension of the situation is so limited to have me thinking I'm just plain dumb.

Plain dumb maybe but is the answer staring me in the face. Maybe some people should not be allowed to travel or leave the house for that matter, because they are the tiny percent that fail to finish even the simplest of tasks once started. I'm just going to the shops dear and you end up drunk in the pub or they are on their way to the dentist and get sidetracked by a bargain at the local supermarket. Maybe that's the mystery group who fail to get onboard in time?

Because of the mystery disappearances and the people who don't even make it to the airport, airlines have developed their own "no show" policy of overbooking flights from 5% to 12% to compensate. Per flight that can be up to 20 passengers but the policy seems to be working and widely accepted, so much so, that no one is really looking to solve the mystery.

Until someone comes up with statistics proving otherwise, I'll go with the non finishers as the mystery fliers or in most case non fliers. Okay, don't go to the dentist but get on the bloody plane.