The queue for Eurostar tickets at Paris's Gare du Nord station last Monday morning was tense. There were "no seats available ‘til Friday". It had been a similar story at Milan's central station when I started my journey north the day before.
At the counter, people were having to make quick, complicated decisions under great stress.
The odd seat was becoming available as other passengers' planned trips got cancelled.
But what to do? Groups were having to split up. Others had to ask themselves whether they could afford businessclass tickets.
Then a cry went up: "There's one ticket now for someone to go to Brussels and then London the train is leaving in 20 minutes anyone want it?"
"Yes!" shouted one man, who left the queue to march to the counter and collect his prize, while the rest of us looked on enviously.
How do you make sure that you are thinking straight at moments of sudden and unexpected crisis?
Few of us are faced with such stark dilemmas as ‘How the hell do I get home?' too often.
But leaders constantly have to make big calls, and often under great pressure.
How do you avoid going wrong at moments like this? London's Ashridge Strategic Management Centre director Andrew Campbell said: "The biggest danger is to draw on inappropriate analogies or rely on rules of thumb developed under different conditions".
Our brains work quickly. Often we think we recognise a situation as being similar to one we have been in before. We remember what we did in the past, and expect we will get a similar result by acting in the same way again.
But these "pattern recognition" skills are not infallible. We can mislead ourselves. Not all crises are the same.
The second biggest danger when making a decision in a crisis is to be over-influenced by "attachments", Mr Campbell said.
This can happen when we fail to realise how much our judgment is being clouded by our emotions, even when we feel certain the choices we are making are hard-headed and objective.
Mr Campbell suggests building in safeguards against these dangers.
First, experienced and better-informed executives can help improve pattern recognition, and challenge false pattern recognition.
Second, involve more people to help reach decisions.
Lastly, better monitoring of decisions once they have been taken can spot mistakes before they have caused too much harm.
Crises will always hit. But in truth a lot of businesses were not prepared for a world in which the planes had stopped flying. Conventional risk management and scenario planning can help you deal with things that are vaguely predictable.
But a complete interruption to business, thanks to a volcanic eruption, was not on many companies' agendas.
That is why Lyndon Bird, technical director at the UK's Business Continuity Institute, said coping with crises was more about having the right attitude rather than having a specific plan.
A few months ago I wrote rather sneeringly about Eurostar's management, and their failure to anticipate a situation where technical problems could leave thousands of passengers stranded. But last week the rabbit in the headlights was me. I was glad when the same company got me home Monday.
