Somewhere 30,000 feet above the USA – Thankfully, I’m writing to you from my Phoenix-bound US Airways flight that left Washington Reagan (DCA) airport with me on it more than an hour ago.

I almost missed the flight, something I haven’t ever done in recent memory.

My reason wasn’t extraordinary. I simply overslept. I woke up at 5:42 a.m. in Silver Spring, Md., for a 7 a.m. flight that would depart from an airport roughly 30 minutes away from our house. I still had to throw a few things in a suitcase. That shower I’d planned? It will have to wait until I land.

My husband bailed me out by driving me at record speeds to DCA, a smaller airport that I know I can navigate quickly.

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Fortunately last night, I’d checked into my flight and paid the $25 for to check a bag so all I had to do was dump my bag and run through the TSA security checkpoint. At that hour at DCA, it was easy and quick. Still, as we were taking our shoes off at the checkpoint, I was still in rush mode – but a veteran road warrior assured me not to worry since he was catching a 7 a.m. flight, too. At this point of the airport journey, he said, we were home free!

So it made me think that many of you must have better stories about almost missing a flight. What’s the closest you’ve come to missing a flight and why?