When last I checked in on my travel this week, I was trying to head home yesterday through Chicago ahead of going to Boston today with my daughter Katie to see Dylan in concert. As I write this, it’s a bit after 5AM and I’m sitting in the Dallas-Forth Worth airport. This wasn’t the plan.
I was supposed to get home around 10:30 last night and then get up and drive the 6 hours to Boston with Katie, returning tomorrow. When I got to the airport yesterday for my flight to Chicago, the 3:50 PM flight had become a 5:30 flight. Doing the math, the 1:40 hour delay was going to cause a problem for my 1 hour connection time in Chicago. I was able to get myself confirmed on a later flight from Chicago to Rochester, so things were still looking possible, if not ok. Since I was going to get home much later, I decided to book two roundtrip airline tickets for Katie and me from Rochester to Boston. That is, I was adding more flights to the mix, but eliminating the long drives.
The Chicago flight moved from 5:30 to 6:00 to 6:30 and then was canceled. In fact, around 6:00 they announced that all further flights into and out of Chicago were canceled for the day. I was now stuck. After speaking with the travel agent and Katie, I decided that my best bet would be to fly to Dallas last night and then on directly to Boston this morning. That second flight is what I’m waiting for now.
Katie will be flying solo from Rochester to Boston later today, the first time she has ever done that for any flight. I should be in Boston several hours before she even leaves, so we should be able to avoid the possibility that she gets to Boston without me. We have family in the Boston area as an additional backup plan. She’ll be bringing the Dylan tickets with her, so as long as there is not problem with her flight, things should work out.
By the way, I called US Air last night to explain to them that while I would not be taking the Rochester-Boston part of the trip today, I did want to use the return flight tomorrow. Normally what happens is that if you skip part of a flight itinerary, they cancel you out of the entire remaining portion of the trip. They were very accommodating when I explained that I was stuck in Dallas for the night.
Keep your fingers crossed for me and, with luck, I’ll tell you tomorrow how the concert was.
this is what you get for talking to me during Office 2.0 :)
in all seriousness, hope you make it to Boston in time. ORD is hell.
Ah, so the previous post came from an airport other than ORD (and o’grady is right, that place is hell.)
Technically speaking, they weren’t exactly correct in telling you everything was canceled, just a lot of them. Our 5:35p HPN->ORD flight sat on the tarmac for nearly 3 hours and left at 8:22p. But since many other flights into ORD were delayed just as much due to the storms there were not as many planes on the ground as they planned, so our 9:30 ORD->RST flight was delayed, eventually to 12:20p, though we finally took off closer to 1:30a. All in all it made for a MUCH longer travel than the planned 3:45 airtime plus 2:20 layover… but we did finally make it home.
Hopefully, your travel tribulations will end as well.
Yes, I was trying to connect through ORD. I hope everything is straightened out because I’ve got to go right back through there tomorrow.