Our Continued O'hare Adventures
We were too busy to post yesterday, so this post is a day late. Sorry.
We woke up Christmas Eve still in Chicago. The good news is that we had tickets on a flight to Detroit. The bad news is that every flight to Detroit the previous day had been canceled and the weather wasn't much better today. Other than a gate change, everything was looking good. We appeared to have a plane and crew. I was starting to let my guard down thinking that we were finally going to make it out of Chicago. That's when we were told that the plane was being forced to carry extra fuel due to the bad weather and therefore was over weight. Twenty of the seventy passengers would not be able to fly on the plane.
My heart sank. I thought to myself that we would surely be on the top of the list of passengers to cut. I started chatting with other passengers to see what other options they knew of. Amtrak was booked (and canceling most of their trips due to weather). All the airlines were booked. There were no rental cars available in the entire city. I thought Greyhound was our only option, until another passenger told me they were also booked solid. If we didn't make it on this plane, we'd be stuck here along with the 87 passengers currently on the standby list.
Without any mention of how many people would be forced to stay in Chicago, they started boarding. That's when we got on that plane as quickly as possible. Would they really pull us off the plane after we were comfortably sitting in our seats? Absolutely they would, but it seamed like an unlikely scenario to me at the time. Still, by the time we were on the plane, I was feeling nervous. I remembered when we were flying standby out of New York. We became friends with all the other standby passengers trying to make it to Austin that weekend. We watched many of our new friends make it on to a plane only to be pulled off when ticketed passengers ran up to the gate at the last second after their connecting flight was late. Everyone at the airport couldn't help but empathize after seeing the tears on the faces of the standby passengers that just went through the emotional roller coaster of thinking they were finally making it home, only to be pulled off the plane, defeated again. Sitting on our plane in Chicago, I was fearing that such a fate could happen to us.
The flight attendants were amazing. They found every way possible to fit bags in the overhead compartments so they didn't have to be checked, thereby decreasing the weight of the plane according to the FAA (carry-on bags aren't added to the weight like checked bags are). These flight attendants knew how important it was to all of us to get home for the holidays. I even overheard one of the flight attendants say that she was only working today because she was unable to make it home herself. After seeing how hard she was working to help us, I really felt bad for her. What they did was remarkable, making sure that every seat on the flight could be filled. I made sure to thank both of the attendants personally at the end of the flight. It's the very least I could do.
We made it, finally through our ordeal. Unfortunately, our one checked bag was still having an adventure. It was stuck somewhere in Chicago, awaiting another flight to Detroit. Around midnight we got a call from the airport. Our bag had arrived. We gladly went back to the airport to pick it up. Now, it's time for warm and fuzzy family time. Exactly what Christmas should be.
We woke up Christmas Eve still in Chicago. The good news is that we had tickets on a flight to Detroit. The bad news is that every flight to Detroit the previous day had been canceled and the weather wasn't much better today. Other than a gate change, everything was looking good. We appeared to have a plane and crew. I was starting to let my guard down thinking that we were finally going to make it out of Chicago. That's when we were told that the plane was being forced to carry extra fuel due to the bad weather and therefore was over weight. Twenty of the seventy passengers would not be able to fly on the plane.
My heart sank. I thought to myself that we would surely be on the top of the list of passengers to cut. I started chatting with other passengers to see what other options they knew of. Amtrak was booked (and canceling most of their trips due to weather). All the airlines were booked. There were no rental cars available in the entire city. I thought Greyhound was our only option, until another passenger told me they were also booked solid. If we didn't make it on this plane, we'd be stuck here along with the 87 passengers currently on the standby list.
Without any mention of how many people would be forced to stay in Chicago, they started boarding. That's when we got on that plane as quickly as possible. Would they really pull us off the plane after we were comfortably sitting in our seats? Absolutely they would, but it seamed like an unlikely scenario to me at the time. Still, by the time we were on the plane, I was feeling nervous. I remembered when we were flying standby out of New York. We became friends with all the other standby passengers trying to make it to Austin that weekend. We watched many of our new friends make it on to a plane only to be pulled off when ticketed passengers ran up to the gate at the last second after their connecting flight was late. Everyone at the airport couldn't help but empathize after seeing the tears on the faces of the standby passengers that just went through the emotional roller coaster of thinking they were finally making it home, only to be pulled off the plane, defeated again. Sitting on our plane in Chicago, I was fearing that such a fate could happen to us.
The flight attendants were amazing. They found every way possible to fit bags in the overhead compartments so they didn't have to be checked, thereby decreasing the weight of the plane according to the FAA (carry-on bags aren't added to the weight like checked bags are). These flight attendants knew how important it was to all of us to get home for the holidays. I even overheard one of the flight attendants say that she was only working today because she was unable to make it home herself. After seeing how hard she was working to help us, I really felt bad for her. What they did was remarkable, making sure that every seat on the flight could be filled. I made sure to thank both of the attendants personally at the end of the flight. It's the very least I could do.
We made it, finally through our ordeal. Unfortunately, our one checked bag was still having an adventure. It was stuck somewhere in Chicago, awaiting another flight to Detroit. Around midnight we got a call from the airport. Our bag had arrived. We gladly went back to the airport to pick it up. Now, it's time for warm and fuzzy family time. Exactly what Christmas should be.
posted by Ruhmann | 5:49 AM
1 Comments:
Ouch, tough trip! I'm sure glad you made it. You're not missing anything here. Well, actually, it was 81ยบ and we drank beer on the porch this afternoon in our shorts, but I'm sure you're enjoying the weather there, too. ;-)
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