DELAY BY STORMS ( one June)
A time to learn patience.
No matter the season, weather can always be an issue in travel, and it seems to be especially so out of the Mid-West in the USA, and especially out of Chicago.
We’ve been delayed by bad weather before, but these storms were WILD!
Chicago was having horrendous thunder and lightning storms, and initially our flight from Champaign was delayed landing as O’Hare had shut down, so we were in holding pattern for a while, and then the pilot announced that maybe we had to return to Champaign, as fuel was running low. But we made it in, and the weather was indeed wild—lashing rain, huge black and purple thunder clouds, ear-shattering thunder, streaks of jagged lightning.
On the ground we couldn’t get to our gate at first as the ground crew don’t work when it’s like this. And, of course, some of the passengers were complaining, wondering why! Bet they wouldn’t like to be out in this.
More fierce rain while we waited in the airport for our flight to Glasgow, and the whole airport shut down again—imagine the ripple effect of this? The end result was that the whole traffic pattern was badly snarled and so there were huge queues of planes waiting to take off.
We eventually got on our Glasgow flight but then sat on the runway for 2 hours in a queue of 100, according to the pilot. Often he shut down the engines to conserve fuel, and some planes had to leave the queue as their fuel got low, or the pilot’s work hours were getting over the limit. Quite a circus. American Airlines did well—the crew were calm, and brought round extra peanuts and juice, as by then it was way past dinner. Very few people were muttering and complaining, as it was terribly obvious that it was out of the pilot’s control.
A night and a flight to practise being philosophical, I think
We’ve been told to prepare for bad storms tonight … the Met Office have been warning of them for 3 days now!
I’m hoping the damage and disruption won’t be too widespread; I want to go to the BTTF at Birmingham on Tuesday!
Hope you weren’t hit, Keith.
It’s been a long hard winter here in Illinois (even though we missed half of it in Paris!).
What’s the BTTF?
>>What’s the BTTF?<<
British Travel Trade Fair … held in Birmingham in March every year. Unfortunately, I missed it this year, due to circumstances you know about … thanks for the condolence message!
A couple of years ago, we were talking about BTTF at travelwriters.com and someone said, what does it mean? He’d tried googling it, and all he came up with was adverts for De Lorean cars.
I think it took a few moments for it to sink in that, of course, in that context, it meant ‘Back To The Future’
Hi Keith,
I always mean to get more involved in the BB at Travelwriters, but never seem to get to it—pity, as they do have some interesting conversations. Isn’t that how you first “met” Shannon Hurst Lane?
Viv
She pops up all over the place! She said some nice things about me on the Writer’s Weekly board, too.
I think we ‘cyber-met’ on the TW board … although she may have been in the old Compuserve JForum ?????