Although the story is a little old now, I thought I would share my flying adventure back to the states. If any of you faithful readers have had similar experiences, please divulge.

My flight from Athens to Munich, via Lufthansa airlines, was scheduled to take off at 1:10 p.m. on Saturday, June 20. I arrived at the airport around 9:45 a.m. with a friend who was catching a flight to Rome at 12:30 p.m. Everything went smoothly as far as checking in weight-complying bags and clearing security. After passing the time reading up on the situation in Iran, I realized it was 1:20 p.m. My plane was supposed to take off 10 minutes ago, and we had not even been called to the gate yet. Panic began to set in when I double-checked my boarding pass for my connecting flight--after a 2-hour, 15-minute flight to Munich, I was scheduled to catch a connecting plane to Newark at 3:20 p.m., German time.

After a rushed boarding, the plane took off at approximately 1:40 p.m. I performed a quick calculation in my head--arrival at Munich at 3:55 p.m. Greek time, 2:55 p.m. German time. Not good.

I tried to keep calm by reading and conversing with the two girls sitting next to me--sisters from Washington, D.C., one of whom studies political science at Boston University, who were visiting family in Greece. But I couldn't keep myself form glancing down at my watch.

We landed on a soggy Munich airport at 2:57 p.m. I stepped off the plane at 3:08 p.m. and immediately began high-tailing it up the escalators and through the airport to passport control and Gate H-14. Another young woman around my age who sat near the back of the plane near me was also on the connecting flight to Newark, so although we never exchanged names or information, we made a silent agreement to book it together.

I believe we boarded the plane at 3:19 p.m.

What irked me about the whole conundrum, though, was the woman who checked my boarding pass before I entered the gate area. With her tight ponytail and yellow scarf around her neck, she uttered, "You should hurry." I stared at her in disbelief and wanted to exclaim "This is not my fault!" When a plane is scheduled to land at 14:40 and a passenger's connecting flight is set to begin boarding at 14:40...well, what do they expect from us? Although a bit inflamed, I put all of my energy into making the last dash to the gate.

But then, even though I was obviously in a full sprint, another Lufthansa official said, "Hurry, you can breathe once you're on board." If I wasn't out of breath, I would have shouted a Greek profanity at him.

Of course, my luggage did not receive such a pleasant an opportunity as running through the airport, so it got left behind and did not accompany me on Lufthansa Flight 412 to Newark. It all arrived intact three days later, and the baggage claim personnel acted courteously. And I don't mean to gripe, but the whole situation leaves me flabbergasted, specifically about the system used for planning connecting flight itineraries. The madness unraveled because the plane that left late from Athens was an incoming flight from Munich that arrived late. Why do airlines schedule back-to-back flights like that, fully realizing that planes rarely take off on time and then only set off a domino effect of succeeding flights departing late...leaving passengers desperately bounding through the airport?