Come fly with me

I do my fair share of traveling and for the most part everything goes smoothly (as I intend it to).  But last Friday when Hallie and I were enroute to Chicago, a quick two-hour flight turned into a day-long saga.

But what are you going to do?

We arrived at the airport at about 9:30 (for an 11:20 flight).  Since we didn't hit traffic and dropping off the car was seamless, we were there in PLENTY of time.  The airport was dead and the security line didn't exist.  We breezed through.  Found our gate and sat to wait.

Then we started to hear about the weather.  At about 10:30 the guy from United Airlines started talking about delays.  Great.  But nothing solid -- we just needed to hang there and wait and see.  At about 11:15 he told us that the pilot had instructed all of us to hit the snack bar and get food because the plan was to board the plane then go sit on the runway for an hour or so waiting for take-off.

The reason for this was because if we were on the runway ready to go, then perhaps air traffic control would let us.  I called my brother to find out about the weather and he said it was sunny.  It was a little confusing and what was this slot stuff anyway?  I understand delays due to weather, but sitting on a runway waiting for a slot?

So that's what we did.  Boarded the plane and sat there for about half an hour or so, and then the pilot came on and said that he had bad news:  Our new "slot" was for 3:30 (it was 12:30) and so they were taking us back to the terminal to wait.

Now here's the thing.  You always hear these horror stories of people getting stuck in airports for hours, even days.  And I have to say that I felt a little trapped, despite the fact that my car was not too far, but it involved too much to get to it!   What were we going to DO for three hours, considering we'd already been there for that long already!  Yikes.

The first thing we did was enjoyed the massage chairs -- three minutes of massage on your back for a buck.  Bargain!  We enjoyed the first three minutes so much, we did it for another three.

Not bad!  We'd killed six minutes.  How hard was it going to be?  We weren't really sure if they were going to give us more information, so we decided to go stand by the woman everyone was lined up to talk to and listen in.

These were all people who had connections to make in Chicago.  And this woman did everything she could to help them out, making phone calls and getting them seats on different flights on different airlines, helping them to find out if their connections were also delayed, etc.

I was very impressed.  I mean, I wasn't thrilled and overjoyed to be stuck in an airport for the day ... but everyone was fairly calm about it and they didn't leave us stuck in a plane on the runway for hours and hours!  They understood we were human beings and treated us as such.

After we were sure that our flight was going to (hopefully) take off at 3:30, we went to the little restaurant for lunch.  We ordered two big beers and a quesadilla to share and I started to watch the banner on the television.  Tornadoes in Arkansas -- big storms ripping across the country.  Yikes!  The pictures were devastating, and I thought, here I am, safe in an airport eating food and having a beer while people's lives are at this moment forever changed.  Either they lost a home, a loved one, their office building ... whatever.  These storms were affecting my travel plans, but they were not changing my life.  Inconvenient to be sure.  Life altering, no.

It's all about perspective I suppose.  And then, as things work, we were trying to decide whether or not to order another beer, so I went to the gate to check things out and they were boarding!  So, all that time we'd killed, and now I was rushing back in a panic, hurrying to get our check so we could get on the plane.  Too funny.

We arrived in Chicago at 4:30, and proceeded to get picked up in a big black Hummer (my brother borrows peoples cars) and then we sat in traffic.  My brother looked at me and said "I told you to get an earlier flight so we wouldn't have to sit in traffic."

Yes well.  Best laid plans of mice and men and all.

Now if women ran the transportation industry ...