Representing O'Hare

I was in The Big Boss’ Office in Washington this morning. He looked at something online and told me to get gonig to the airport right that second or I might not make it home. I had put myself on the standby list when I checked in, and was thankful for the go-ahead to bail out. When the snow starts early, it can snarl air traffic all day, and I’d been hearing 3-7 inches.


Arrived at Reagan at 11:20. Security was really light, but by the time I arrived at the gate, the 11:30 have departed, and the 12:30 was cancelled so there wasn’t much chance I would make the list for the 1:30. I was booked on the 2:30.  I did some mental calculations:

If the 1:30 is delayed by half an hour and it isn’t noon yet, I can figure I will be delayed two hours on the 2:30 flight. Math..time zone change..math…I will still be home around dinner time. So I settled in with a book and a snack. Then I walked around a bit. And read some more. The 1:30 flight boards. My plane has already arrived. United guy gets on the loud speaker. He tells us that while the system shows a 3:15 departure, we should all hang around because they are trying to do better than that.

Apparently, if you are already sitting on the tarmac with a full flight, you might be able to guilt or blackmail air traffic control into letting you take off. And once you are in the air, what are they going to do?

Not two minutes later, the same guy is at the gate, telling us to get our butts in gear because this puppy is going to move. (He didn’t actually say that.)

But remember yesterday when I was rolling my eyes at the Global Alliance people? Well, this is the situation where you want to be travelling with them. Because we got to boarding and everyone was helping everyone else with the bags and the coats and the getting settled. Would you believe some of them were also on my flight to Washington yesterday? (You know you are travelling too much when you start to recognize other passengers.)

Bottom line: my plane landed exactly six minutes later than scheduled. And the snow is still coming down.

I love O’Hare. I love United Airlines. I am going to go online and tell them so.