Get to the gate early or your travel plans may not fly
These days, when it comes to flying, Tom Dail says he feels like a teenager. "Every time I go to the airport it seems I'm grounded," said Tom, who arrived five minutes late at his gate in Detroit and was bumped from the flight.

"It used to be when the airline said to be at your gate 30 minutes early, you sat and waited 40 minutes before they boarded. Now I've seen them actually close their doors before the scheduled departure time," he said.

Tom isn't the only frequent traveler who has had an airplane door shut in his face. When Jean Cowden checked in for her flight to Kansas City, she waited nearly an hour to check her bag. When she finally made it to the front of the line, the agent told her it was too late to check the bag and the bag was too big to carry on. Jean carried on, but not the way the agent meant. He ended up booking her on a later flight.

Chicago Daily Herald, IL