The couple failed to meet each other as previously arranged due to ______. [orig

Man: ...anyway, I felt pretty upset, I can tell you!
Woman:  Well, something even worse happened to some friends of a colleague of mine in New York. The husband was on an extended business trip and the idea was that his wife would come over in the middle of it to spend a long weekend with him. He was flying in from Boston, and the wife from Europe and they were going to meet up on the Friday evening and stay the weekend together at one of those very big hotels near Central Park.
Man: Yeah.
Woman: Well, the hotel computer had got file first letter of their name wrong--theft name began with a B (I think it was Berry) but it was spelt on the computer with a P. So the wife arrived at the hotel, gave her name and asked "Has ray husband arrived yet?" and the reception clerk looked her up on the computer, said "No, not yet" and so she said she’ d wait in their room and she was shown to the room. Well, then about half an hour later the husband arrived and gave this name and spelt it out carefully to the reception clerk and asked "Has my wife arrived yet?" and she looked up the name on the computer and said "No, not yet", so he said he’ d wait in the room and the clerk promised to send his wife up to him when she arrived and he was shown up to a different room. So he turned on the TV and started waiting.
Man: Oh...
Woman: Well, they both waited for a couple of hours and then the wife called reception, was told her husband still hadn’t arrived. So she went down to the restaurant and had a meal and then, being fired, you know, she went to bed. The husband was not quite hungry so, after calling reception and being told his wife still hadn’t arrived, he went down to have his dinner, and then went to bed. Well, the next day, they narrowly missed each other at breakfast, so they decided there was no point in sitting around waiting, so they both went out shopping or sightseeing, missed each other again that evening and didn’t finally meet up again fill the next afternoon. By this time the husband had to fly off to Washington for a meeting first thing on Monday!
Man: Oh, that’s amazing] It’s always strange in a new city. I... I remember once I was going to a conference in Norway, I landed at Oslo Airport and as I didn’t know the city, I picked up a whole lot of leaflets and a street map at the airport before catching the bus into town.
Woman: Mhm.
Man: Well, one of the leaflets was quite fat, about 100 pages long and it was called "Where to Eat in Oslo", so I started looking at it to find a nice restaurant to go to that evening --I always prefer to eat out rather than in my hotel.
Woman: Yeah.
Man: And I soon realized that the same restaurant was being described again. I looked all the way through the leaflet and every page was a description of the same restaurant! There were no others in there! 100 pages all about the same restaurant!
Woman: Oh, what was the name of file restaurant?
Man: I can’t remember!
Woman: Oh, that reminds me of something. A colleague of mine was in Sweden. He was at the end of a tough series of meetings in Stockholm and about to fly back home to London. Well, he checked his suitcase in and went through to tile departure lounge, had a drink and caught his plane back to Heathrow. Unfortunately, the check-in clerk had put the wrong label on his case and it had the tag for a different flight on it...
Man: So he went to London and his luggage went somewhere else?
Woman: No, no, no, no, worse than that. They did a security check on all the luggage that was being loaded onto the other flight and found that there was no passenger name to match that particular suitcase. So they very carefully took the case off to the far comer of the airport and the security police blew it up!
Man: Oh!
Woman: Luckily, it only contained dirty clothes and a toothbrush and stuff like that. And he got fully compensated by the airline.
Man: Er... I remember my boss telling me about something that happened a few years ago when he was somewhere in the Far East anyway. There was a long delay at the airport. So they all settled down for a long wait, feeling reassured that they weren’t having to fly in a faulty plane.
Woman: Yeah.
Man: Two hours later there was another announcement, "We have found a new plane. But the new plane is more sick than the first one, so we will take the first one." And they were all escorted to the first plane and it took off but they all felt very nervous and everyone started knocking back the gin and whisky. Anyway eventually they arrived at their destination and by this time everyone had managed to forget that the plane was "sick", but instead of landing, the plane kept circling round and round and round. Everyone started to get worried again. And then a msn in uniform came out of the little door leading to the flight deck with a screwdriver. He walked halfway down the aisle, stopped and lifted up the carpet. Then he raised a metal flap and reached inside with the screw driver. There was a loud click and then they heard the landing gear going down. The man in uniform went back to the flight deck. The plane made its final approach and landed safely. As they all came down the steps, you could literally see everyone still shaking with fear.