I was on a flight home for Christmas from San Francisco to Milwaukee with a connection is Chicago. The first half of the flight went off without a hitch. I get into Chicago on time and have about an hour to kill before catching my flight to Milwaukee which is only an hour away by car and about 30 minutes by plane.
As I get to the gate for my flight I see that the flight has been delayed by 30 minutes. Looking at the weather and talking to other passengers who have been at O’Hare for over 24 hours I am feeling pretty lucky, only 30 minutes. Thirty minutes come and go and we find that there is some mechanical problems and we will be delayed for another 30 minutes. Still, not that bad. Finally we are boarding the plane. Everyone is lining up and getting ready to leave when we are told that we have to vacate this section of the terminal. Apparently there is a fire in the employee break room.
This is just great, why can’t we just board our plane and vacate the terminal that way? Well needless to say we vacate the terminal and wait another hour to be allowed back in the terminal. When we get back to the gate we board the plane and prepare to depart. Unfortunately we need to be deiced and apparently the deicing truck is on the other side of the airport. 45 minutes later we are taking off.
We land in Milwaukee at 2 AM only 3 and a half hours late. As we taxi I call my parents to come and pick me up, only to learn that another plane landed just before us and there is only one grounds crew at the airport. We wait another 30 minutes parked on the tarmac waiting for the grounds crew. Then of course it only takes 1 hour to get the luggage to the baggage claim and then only 1 piece at a time. I finally got out of the airport around 3:45 AM. Thankfully my dad came and picked me up, because he goes into work at 4:30.
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I've never seen an airline delay a flight for more than 30-45 minutes at a time. That first delay should have been the sign to find a bus or a taxi or something.
Roto, you clearly haven't flown very much.
Flying through O'Hare, I generally expect to be delayed by at least an hour, if not more. I've rarely had a flight take off on time from ORD.
Sounds like a pretty crappy deal, though.