The Wrong Airport: A €150 Lesson in Paris

The mistake happened about six months into the first year of full-time travel that my husband David and I spent together. It was expensive at the time and it is funny now, which is the usual order of these things.

In our household I am the planner. I like the hunt — the research, the comparison, the small victory of finding a better fare — and David is delighted to be married to someone who does it. His only jobs are packing a suitcase and being where I tell him to be, when I tell him to be there.

The afternoon the tickets were bought

We were in Paris in April 2016. I had a Paris to Bologna flight on the screen, ready to book, when David interrupted and we went out for a light bite and a wander instead. A few hours later I logged back on, found what I was looking at that morning and bought it. Then I booked the bus to the airport, feeling efficient.

What I did not do was look again at the departure airport. The assumption was that Paris had one, or at least that a budget airline would not be running two flights to the same city at the same hour on the same day.

Ryanair, it turns out, was running exactly that.

The bus that was going the wrong way

Travel day was one of those bright spring mornings in Paris, blue sky, sun, no coat needed. We were on the bus to Charles de Gaulle with nothing on our minds except arriving in time. Somewhere in the city traffic I looked down at the tickets properly for the first time.

We were on a bus to the wrong airport.

I did not handle it with dignity. There was a moment of pure panic, followed by the full sequence of questions: should we get off the bus? Should we stay on? How does anyone get from one Paris airport to the other? We had to make the flight, because we had arranged to stay at a WorkAway in Perugia, and the hosts were meeting us at the train station. A missed flight was not just a missed flight; it was a chain of people waiting for us.

The bus driver settled the first two questions for me. Nobody was getting off before the terminal, so we stayed aboard and watched the city slide past.

One hundred and fifty euros of taxi

At Charles de Gaulle, David took charge of cleaning up after me. He walked to the taxi rank, found a driver who spoke English and arranged a cab to Beauvais-Tillé, the airport the tickets had named all along.

I put my bag in the back and sat in silence while the meter climbed, euro by euro, for two hours.

Two hours and €150 later we were sitting in the Beauvais-Tillé lounge sharing a bottle of wine before the flight to Bologna, and I felt like a complete idiot. The bus from Paris to Beauvais-Tillé, which is how we should have travelled, would have cost about €20.

What the mistake cost

• The taxi: €150, against roughly €20 for the bus we should have booked.
• Two hours in a cab through the outskirts of Paris.
• One very apologetic travel planner, and one husband who handled it without complaint.

The flight itself was fine. Bologna, Perugia and the WorkAway were fine. The only lasting damage was to my pride and my wallet.

What I do differently now

I read the tickets several times before the day of travel, and again before booking anything that connects to a flight. Departure airport, terminal, time — all of it. If two flights to the same city leave at the same hour from different airports, the cheapest answer is not necessarily the one on your screen.

We still laugh about it. But honestly, who expects an airline to run two flights from Paris to Bologna at the same time on the same day? (The answer, it turns out, is Ryanair. Now you know, and so do I.)

This is a guest post for Travellers' Tales by Heidi from FlyawayU.com. Travellers' Tales gathers personal travel experiences from people around the world; if you have an inspiring, interesting or funny story to share, get in touch at [email protected]. You can also follow Heidi and David on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.

More from the series: Lost in Translation, Lost in Translation 2, the worst train ride ever, when a wrong train led to the right destination and finding friendship in snow-covered Sweden. If you are heading to France, these are my tips for visiting Paris when you don't speak French.