It depends on the executive, but I would say it's not uncommon. Perhaps not on a lark, but because something pops up at the last minute. This portion of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography comes to mind:
> Early in his tenure, Cook was told of a problem with one of Apple's Chinese suppliers. "This is really bad", he said. "Someone should really be in China driving this." 30 minutes later he looked at an operations executive sitting at the table and unemotionally asked, "What are you still doing here?" The executive stood up, drove directly to San Francisco Airport, and bought a ticket to China.
