Anybody have briefers giving wrong info?

[PeanuckleCRJ]

When I was instructing, my student planned a flight from TLH-VLD and back for a night cross country. I called the briefer to back up my student's call while I was driving to the airport. No NOTAM's except the usual unlit towers.

We blast off and get to the airport and set up for the approach. Low and behold, I see a big yellow X flashing on the runway at both ends. Circle around... take a peak at the other runway.. also a big yellow yellow X.... You can also see trucks driving around the runways occasionally. Yep...the airport was totally closed and neither briefer mentioned it.

Always took what I heard from the FSS in a bit different light after that little incident.

 

[Airway]

Had a briefer screw up my departure airport once when I was a fresh, new Instrument Pilot, and he pissed on me for it instead of taking the blame.

I was in an airport in Northern California (SFO area), and tower was closed (about 10PM), me and three friends were flying back to SoCal. I called FSS on my cell to get our clearance limit, filed everything like usual. Told the guy where we were and our destination and he filed everything and we had a couple of minutes to takeoff. So, we strapped in and I taxied out and took off, contacted Norcal, and told them we were "out of San Carlos" on the first call, and there was a pause and he keyed the mike a couple of times as if to talk but didn't. Finally, he gave us vectors for traffic, and we ended up going to San Jose because San Carlos did not have fuel open after hours.

In any case, landed in San Jose and I called FSS to file another FP, and the guy asked if I was the one that took off out of the wrong airport. I said what. And he started going off about how I took off out of the wrong airport (as if I carried the plane in my bag and stopped at the wrong airport to unfold it and depart) and gave me this schpiel about responsibility and how I had all of NorCal up in arms. I was like ok sorry for the misunderstanding, but I wasn't even aware that there was an airport in Palo Alto, let alone filed for it. Anyways, ATC never contacted me about it, so we just went on our way.

When I look back, I really realize how much of an ass that guy was. I told him exactly where we were and where we were going, and he even read it back to me. Had ATC contacted me I would have gotten the tapes.

That was my one and only bad experience with FSS. Ever since then, I always give them the identifier twice when filing, even if they know exactly which airport I'm talking about.